I've been involved in conducting and evaluating survey research for more than twenty years, ever since completing graduate work in regulatory economics with an emphasis on survey research design. I was dismayed that Poets and Writers, in its November/December on-line magazine, published rankings of MFA programs that are based on bogus research methods. The author of the rankings has no credentials as a pollster. Why would Poets and Writers entrust such an important assignment — one with a lot at stake for many individuals and writing programs — to a blogger? Here's the letter I sent to the Editor:
Dear Mr. Larimer:
It is astonishing that Poets & Writers would publish Seth Abramson’s MFA program rankings (www.pw.org Nov/Dec 2009) without scrutinizing his research methods, which are utterly bogus. Unlike a valid poll, which would survey a randomly selected representative sample of the total pool of current and potential MFA applicants, Abramson's poll reflects only the responses of self-selected readers of his blog, and there is nothing to prevent individuals from responding more than once from multiple locations. The people drawn to a single point-of-view blog are already inclined to agree with the blogger's biases, and even a cursory look at Abramson's blog reveals just how many extreme biases he has. Any responsible social science researcher knows that findings based on self-selected survey responses are not just worthless — they can be harmful and misleading.
Sincerely,
Stacey Harwood