Geographic location poll

[sqbr]

I've been pondering how to do polls about various things in a way which minimises people feeling excluded or otherwise misrepresented. And I think the easiest way to test those ideas out is make polls and see what people don't like about them!

First off, nationality. As was pointed out to me the last time I tried doing a poll on this topic, just because I've lived in the same country my whole life and fit comfortably into it's majority culture doesn't mean other people's identities are so simple. It struck me that asking where people are currently located is a much less ambiguous question though of course you have to be careful not to then make the jump from "geographic location" to "national identity" in the analysis etc (especially since people might be on a three day business trip or something :)).

So! Please do this poll and then tell me anything about it that bugs you.

Poll #3915

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 39

In which geographic region are you currently located?

Africa
0 (0.0%)

North America
12 (30.8%)

South America
1 (2.6%)

Asia
1 (2.6%)

Europe
9 (23.1%)

Oceania
17 (43.6%)

Polar regions
1 (2.6%)

Somewhere at sea
0 (0.0%)

The sky/Space/parallel universe etc
0 (0.0%)

Other
0 (0.0%)

Using Wikipedia's Regions of the World. I divided North and South America since they are two different continents.

Another different question I could ask is "in which geographic location is the place or places that you consider "home" in some significant way?" but that's a bit vague, maybe.

Any alternatives, extra questions or extra answers etc you think would be better?

Comments

[adelheid]

'In which geographic region are you currently located?' is really quite a different question from 'in which geographic location is the place or places that you consider "home" in some significant way?' Plus, that second one would need to be a tickybox question rather than radioboxes. For me, anyway. (Also, place or places that I consider home may still not indicate nationality, plus recall that a person may have more than one nationality.)

The one thing that bugged me in this one is actually something that I need to stop being bugged by, which is having to tick 'Oceania' rather than 'Australia'.

[sqbr]

Oh they are definitely different questions. It might be worth asking both, it depends on the context the question is being asked in. For me they all get the same answer which makes it harder for me to figure out what questions to be asking.

The one thing that bugged me in this one is actually something that I need to stop being bugged by, which is having to tick 'Oceania' rather than 'Australia'.

It bugged me too and always does, but I decided that if the Germans and Canadians etc had to deal with being lumped together with people from completely different parts of their respective regions then I should have to deal with the pain as well :)

curiouser and curiouser

[nixwilliams]

hee! i find it weird to identify myself as being in the same 'continent'/area as hawaii! and it also seems rather arbitrary to say that PNG is part of oceania but west papua isn't? (but then i guess there are all kinds of arbitrary divisions between, say, asia and europe, too?) how do these decisions get made?

Re: curiouser and curiouser

[sqbr]

Oh it's all entirely arbitrary. One of the things I like about geographical groupings and location is that it's so obviously arbitrary, while some of the other possible ways of asking these sorts of questions seem simple and natural to people with particular identities but are actively exclusionary to others. Of course, the preference for the arbitrary but unambiguous may also be my mathematician's brain talking :)

Re: curiouser and curiouser

[ex_peasant441]

It's interesting that divisions which to me seem founded on perfectly obvious and important geographical boundaries strike you as arbitrary! I suspect this means that as someone who has been trained in geography I have been inculcated with the same geographers' mindset which informed the choice of boundaries.

Incidentally, the division of New Guinea between Oceania and Asia, is based on the political division.

Re: curiouser and curiouser

[sqbr]

Geography was always my worst academic subject at school, maps confound me :) I mean it's not completely arbitrary, the boundaries between say North and South America seem relatively unambiguous (unless you live in Panama I suppose) It's much less arbitrary than grouping countries by alphabetical order or something. But it's not as intuitive to me as a non-geographer as some other divisions might be.

Though as I recall the last time I did a poll like this the options were "Australia" and "Other" :D

Re: curiouser and curiouser

[ex_peasant441]

It's probably not intuitive because the groupings are based on multiple criteria - a complex combination of cultural, political and continental.

For some reason geography is often very badly taught (no reflection on your school intended) which leaves a lot of people confused for life.

I once did a poll of my flist listing every country except the USA which was under 'other', this caused a degree of amusement and revenge amongst the rest of us.

Re: curiouser and curiouser

[ex_pippin880]

Have I told you about how hilariously awful my geographic knowledge is?

Re: curiouser and curiouser

[ex_pippin880]

I thought Edinburgh was in England -- I only discovered it was actually, you know, the capital of Scotland, when we were watching Murder Rooms and I asked why they had Scottish accents.

I'm always momentarily confused when I see that Greece is to the east, not west, of Italy.

I thought the Bermuda Triangle was near Turkey, and that the West Indies were next to Asia.

I always thought the western bit of Mexico was Florida.

Re: curiouser and curiouser

[sqbr]

Ha, yeah, I'm always doing things like that.

Until relatively recently, I thought Africa was to the west of Europe, so that the middle east was under Turkey. I'm not sure I'd thought about what made up the southern shore of the Mediterranean (Greece maybe?)

[yalovetz]

Currently located in Oceania, legal citizen of and cultural identity most informed by an upbringing in a country in Europe, and also a legal citizen of a country in the Caribbean (which would probably come under North America in your poll, or perhaps Somewhere at sea).

For me, legal nationality =/= cultural identity =/= current location.

[sqbr]

*nods*

I think if I make any polls which actually have a point beyond arbitrary random interest (like "How do people's opinions on X topic vary depending on what region they're 'from'" etc) I'm going to have to think very carefully about which of those (or other identities etc) is relevant and how to ask about it. Location seemed like a good place to start with since it is at least fairly easy to answer for most people but it obviously doesn't tell you very much about a lot of things.

[kaz]

I have German/US-American dual nationality, was born in the US and spent most of my childhood in Germany but part of it in the US, my cultural background/family background/etc. is German and I do NOT consider myself American although I sometimes do consider myself to be from the specific state where we lived (although not the one I was born in). And, to top things off, am currently living in Britain and have been for six years, aka the entirety of my adult life.

So, like, if you asked me where "home" was I'd say Germany, and if you asked me for a location in Germany I'd give the city in which my family lived after returning from the states although I only set foot in it for the first time when I was eleven (because the only alternative is the city we moved from when I was five which I cannot remember living in, and which is in Bavaria when I do not consider myself Bavarian), if you gave me ticky boxes and separated out "home" and "where you are from" and "cultural background" and "ethnic background" and all that I might also add Britain and might might MIGHT add "Connecticut" if it was an option but would never add "USA" (?!?! my brain.)

...it's complicated? D:

Personal rage buttons for me are assuming birthplace, nationality, or ethnic background entail everything else (for the first two, as said, do NOT consider myself American - and birthplace actually erases my identity as German completely - for the last, I get severely pissed off when people argue as though a US person of US culture with German heritage a few generations back is totally the same as and equivalent to me and my experiences), conflating culture with other identity markers, assuming there are no cultural differences between Western countries (minimising culture as an aspect of identity or, especially, conflating US culture and German culture and other Western cultures, sets me off like nothing else. I am still plumbing the depths of the complexes and hurts growing up with a minority culture in the US gave me.)

I am understanding of just "Europe" though because there's not enough boxes for every country in the world, so unless something else is going on it pings me as a space limitation rather than conflation. Do admit to feeling kind of >:) to see all countries being treated that way, since usually it's something like "US, Canada, Australia, UK" and *then* "other country in Europe, etc." (or sometimes just "other country" as one option which... yeah, not so much.) Also, I do generally consider "where are you from" as a question okay because that's a question I can interpret in a way I find comfortable, although it's somewhat different in RL (where if I answer "Germany" people think I've just recently moved to the UK and if I answer "(city in Britain)" people think I'm British. *sigh*). You might also try something like "what do you consider your national identity/ies" or... idk. /o\

Sorry for the wordflow, just, IT'S COMPLICATED. D:

[ajnabi]

heh, yeah, assuming birthplace, nationality, etc. it's very complicated. for me, i was born in india (but people in india tend to assume a lot of the time that i was born in the u.s.), but i'm a u.s. citizen (i would qualify for dual citizenship if india really had dual citizenship, but that's another complicated matter). and i've grown up in both places (mostly india, but complicated). so yes! i understand what you mean

[sqbr]

Thankyou for laying it out like that. Experiences like yours can't be easily captured by little polls!

Personal rage buttons for me are assuming birthplace, nationality, or ethnic background entail everything else

This is something I definitely need to work on.

I get really flaily about "Western Culture" since it both does and doesn't cover my experience when people conflate it with US culture. I think we're more similar in Autralia to the US than Germany is, especially with regards to speaking English, but we're still not the same. And of course (as you'd know better than me) even actual US culture doesn't fit neatly into the single homogeneous "US culture" people talk about.

Do admit to feeling kind of >:) to see all countries being treated that way, since usually it's something like "US, Canada, Australia, UK" and *then* "other country in Europe, etc." (or sometimes just "other country" as one option which... yeah, not so much.)

Australia is elided by enough polls that I understand the feeling, and that equality of lumping together is something that I feel is very important. I was pretty sure I wouldn't get anyone ticking "at sea", "polar regions" or "Africa" (though as it turns out, I did!) but it would still be really off to lump them together.

[ex_peasant441]

Perhaps 'in which region do you live?' would be a phrase that gave you a better idea of what I think you are trying to find out, since it eliminates the problem of short term travelling. Most people I think have a mental concept of where their residence is.

[twtd]

Though even this could be complicated by people who live in multiple places. When I was very young, we'd spend (very) roughly half of the year in the US and half of the year in Saudi Arabia, both of which were "home," which would make answering that question difficult. It wasn't short term traveling, we'd spend months in either location, but neither was more of a permanent location than the other.

It is amazing how complicated a seeming simple question can get.

[sqbr]

It is amazing how complicated a seeming simple question can get.

It is! I started thinking about this all about two years ago after blithely making a poll asking people "where they were from" and having the gaping holes in that question pointed out. And the more I thought about it, the more complicated the question got, and more unstated assumptions I started poking at.

[ex_peasant441]

Of course. This is why serious statistical studies relying on poll questions always have to begin with a small scale test run to try to iron out such problems.

You will still always get the unexpected of course. The last UK census produced 'Jedi Knight' as the fourth largest religion because enough people were sufficiently annoyed by the question they decided to take the piss.

[ajnabi]

i don't really think "most people" have a mental concept of where their residence is. i mean, i don't know, and anyway, majority definitions bug me a LOT.

also, yeah, i agree with twtd. things can be much more complicated.

i'm currently going to college in the u.s., but my permanent residences are in india. i'm not really sure where i "live". i guess most of the time i live in the u.s. these days, various places, but that question is far too limiting.

[ajnabi]

and okay, checkboxes, but still.

[ajnabi]

ahh! i wish i still had a paid account so i could edit. (i'm sorry for the comment spammage).

the problem is the assumptions of home and identity that go along with the question, yes, and about what length of time makes a place somewhere you "live", what's a "regular basis" and what's not, etc.

[sqbr]

Those are really good points, thankyou.

[ex_peasant441]

It seems to me you have a perfectly good concept of where you live, you just happen to practice inter-continental scholastic transhumance. I think an additional option of 'two or more regions' would more than adequately cover your case.

i don't really think "most people" have a mental concept of where their residence is.
Oh they most certainly do. I'm out of the field these days so can't quote you proper references but a lot of work has been done on just this subject. People form mental maps of their world and their residence in relation to other places, developing a concept of 'home' to fit their personal needs. There will of course always be exceptions or variations on the theme but I think the phrase 'most people' is perfectly fair.

majority definitions bug me a LOT

Almost any statistical survey will produce a clustered result set, that is just a fact of life. It only becomes a problem if people attach moral judgements to the clusters.

[sqbr]

There's a difference between acknowledging that a majority exists and letting that majority dictate what definitions and categories we use too much. I imagine she was objecting to the latter.

I think this is especially relevant for an inherently unscientific poll like this where there's no Deep and Important Inquiry going on, so that there's no strong reason not to place a higher priority on making the people taking the poll feel more included even if it's slightly at the expense of accuracy (and I don't think that more inclusiveness does necessarily lead to poorer results. But I'm not too fussed either way)

[sqbr]

As has been pointed out, it covers more people but I think would be much more annoyingly ambiguous for the people it didn't cover. I'm pondering another poll not about where people live but about how people relate to where they live and have lived etc, I'm wondering just how many people have these complicated identities. Quite a few, I think.

[moonbug]

From my personal experience, I know living in different places and where those places were (both physically/culturally) has affected my perception of issues and my own identity.

[moonbug]

In a previous place I worked we had "North Africa and Middle East" and "Sub-sahara Africa" as separate locations rather than as "Africa". There were also other sub regions listed rather than the usual 7 continents. This is because we wanted to group where people came from not only in terms of physical geography but cultural geography.

Of course even within a country there are different cultural and ethnic groups that people identify with, which change their perception of "home".

I guess it depends on why you are asking where people are, what are you hoping to do with that data, how is that going to affect what you write/do/talk about/whatever in the future.

[sqbr]

Yes, I thought about those sorts of options, but being very geographically ignorant decided to go with the consensus of the first few "regions of the world" sites I found via google.

I guess it depends on why you are asking where people are, what are you hoping to do with that data, how is that going to affect what you write/do/talk about/whatever in the future.

*nods*

I thought it was worth poking at in advance to get a feel for the scope of the issues, but it's definitely something I'll have to consider the specifics of carefully whenever I make a more focussed poll involving location and identity etc.