Non-participation Bias in SMS Polls
Intel Research Solution Kenya Presidential Opinion Poll Report
When Irish tenant farmers in Mayo County experienced a poor crop harvest in 1880, they turned to their landlord and asked for a 25% rent reduction. One land agent, former British Army Captain, Charles Boycott refused to accede to the tenants’ demands. He instead, issued demands for the outstanding rents, and obtained eviction notices against all tenants.
Captain Boycott’s tenants began to shun him and then the whole town ostracized him leading to his departure back to England. The Times of London covered the story and coined the word “to boycott” to mean “refusing to have dealings”. And the refusal to have dealings has permeated politics leading to election boycott as a form of political protest.
The IRS Presidential Poll Report
Intel Research Solutions (IRS), a market and social research company released an SMS based opinion poll on the Kenyan presidential race for the month of June. The poll placed the Deputy President at 51.2% and the former Prime Minister at 42.5%. A sound methodology is deployed by the firm in creating a national random sample drawn from a database of potential voters across the country with the sampling done at County level.
However, the SMS survey did not take into account the Kenyan attitude to political SMSes — spamming from political campaigns has created a negative attitude towards to SMS polls. Like the tenant farmers in Ireland, the average Kenyan would boycott such SMS leading into a non-participation bias. This type of bias occur when subjects refuse to take part in a study resulting in the sample being systematically different to the target population as is evident in the IRS demographics below.
Even though the polling began with a random sample, non-participation led the results of the poll to be heavily biased to male voters at 67% against 33% female voters. Three out of the four presidential candidates nominated female running mates, it is thus proper to assume gender will be a decisive factor in the upcoming elections.
In the Irish farmers plight, it is the women of the area who descended on server of eviction notice throwing stones, mud, and manure succeeding in driving them away. It is the women who begun the boycott.
