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

[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.