Methodological totalitarianism of mass polls

The seventeenth year I am engaged in the methodology of polls of public opinion, study the rules for organizing sample, evaluate displacements, and listen to the features of the question-answer communication. And I do not cease to be surprised at the obvious, striking Nesurazitsa, a complete absurdity that accompanies any conversation about the questionnaire. Its name is standardization, or the requirement of a literal, without smiles, reservations, comments and words of gratitude to the reproduction of a pre -written text. “The interviewer is a parrot, his opinion, position, values ​​are not interested in us. Losers and poverty, collecting material for us, are suitable only for repetitions. Normal people will not go to interviewers. ”

If these were the words of a politician, a journalist or a newly -minted expert who juggling quantitative data, one could not be surprised, pass by and forget. But these are the words of a professor of sociology, a respected person who, several decades teaching students the methodology of sociological research. This is the voice of domestic sociology, rough, sloppy, not wanting to notice the garbage of the world around him.

This year, the project was finally launched to study the interviewers, their life world, the system of values, ideas about what is happening, about their place in the formation and broadcasting of public opinion. We talk for a long time, with breaks on tea, with flashing hot spores, with retelling of difficulties and achievements. The young woman thirty-five years old, who has worked for two years by the field interviewer, is surprised at the excuses of the capital sociologists: “Once the deer brigades were interviewed somewhere in the north. A person by age, at the place of residence, approached. I have to interview him.

He is 25 years old, but there is not even primary education. The conversation stretches like a chewing gum. He patiently listens, asks, and I already got enough of repeating and explain. I to him: “ Development Prospects”, and he: “What is it? ” Here the connection broke off. She even crossed herself: “ Well, thank God ” - and did not call back. It is impossible to transfer it. The profiles in this language are written, you do not know half of the terms with higher education. If you make up questions for wise men, why not warn, not cut off at the very beginning of ordinary people? Why overtake everyone, turning the conversation into continuous torment? " In such a situation, deviations from questionnaire issues are not surprising. If someone asks to explain what was said, it is elementary impolite to poke him in the instructions, monotonously re-reading the clumsy stationery of the questionnaire. But sociologists standardizing the whole world do not tolerate mistakes. They will better blame the interviewer than recognize their own failure.

A man, in sixty, the fourth year works an interviewer: “It happens that you’re a mistake in the park. But you stop yourself, you try not to break. You’ll press the wrong button, or you need to imagine the options separately, and you will read it in a skill. Then you think: what did I do? It was not necessary. But everything goes away. In the fuse, you’re going, everything is fine, Oops-and you will pierce. Of course, to blame. But in order to thoroughly fulfill all the norms, you must not hear a person. Another interlocutor will be so carried away that these footnotes will not notice, you will slip through without sneezing. And when someone begins to poke his nose, they say, it’s not the case here, you involuntarily think: but at least once I tried to pretend to be so that everything would be like that? ” Standardization, bordering on screaming formalism, is not bad with its rigidity, inhumanity or elasticity to common sense. Its main drawback is insensitivity to communicative malfunctions and failures of typical situations. One person will begin to swim with an answer, the other - to scream and mock, the third - flirt and flirt with the interviewer.

It would seem that the external communicative strategies accompanying the answers, in fact, are redesigning the answers themselves. Interviewers feel it, but, adhering to standardization, they miss, pretend that nothing happens. Only a few dare to stop the interview or break the procedure. Before asking meaningful questions, they will repair a general understanding of the conversation. The limited standardization is felt by many experts who are seriously related to surveys, and the first among them are interviewers. A woman, a little older than fifty, with a charming smile, from the first minute has a conversation: “She sat with children for ten years: neither girlfriends, nor relatives nearby, nobody. I completely forgot to communicate with people. But the money is needed, the doubt crumpled and go. An interview passed. They immediately gave trial work - a survey of the population in bank deposits. People are reluctant to talk about it. But I coped. They listened and said: "You are what we need." Immediately ducked into a human whirlpool, and twisted. You sit down, put on the headphones, gain air and go. The main thing is to cope with excitement, speak clearly, somewhere even officially. But people are different: who will rudely answer, who will begin to scream, scream. You will involuntarily stumble, the voice will flinch, let you miss something, you will start stuttering. It’s impossible to feel very confident, not a car. ”

The zealous controllers and their bosses, who note any deviations of the interviewer from the questionnaire, puncture, reproach, requiring all literacy, do not understand that they are completely obligated to their presence in the interviewer in the interviewer. The latter retain the balance between formalized insocisions and human communication, allow us to reproduce the standardized nonsense of quantitative studies from year to year.

Tactically, everyone is winning. Some amuse scientific pride that maintain faith in standardization and the possibility of total measurement of any manifestations of human freedom. Others, softening and bypassing sharp corners, earn money in unprecedented conditions of complete suppression of will. But everyone is playing strategically. The interview industry for the century cannot cross the methodological totalitarianism of standardization.

Dmitry Rogozin,
cand. social. sciences