By Hamed Saber

In a recent post I questioned if a survey’s credibility was damaged if its results supported those who have paid for it. It generated some interesting comments like this one:

It does boil down to how the survey results are presented and the prupose behind this. And that’s coming from some one who surveys for a living. You can easily judge how much credence to give by the willingness to set out the parameters of the survey and openness to scrutiny of the methodology used. Media outlets also have a lot to answer for in reporting especially if they do so without investigating those fundamentals or should we blame the need to fill column inches? Frank

The Sun Herald (as well as The Age and The Australian) ran this story which covered the results of some research commissioned by the Vic Government revealing:

Melbourne is Australia’s most liveable city

Now I’m not disputing the results - Roy Morgan ran it and I also LOVE Melbourne (the fact my small children adore their four grandparents who are within 10 minutes drive of our home, means for right now I’m very happy in Adelaide) but I’m just shining a light on how often these surveys, generally done purely to generate good headlines for those commissioning them, are so often picked up by the media.

There are more and more survey’s being used as a PR tool and some make really interesting reading but most of them have such obvious results I’m often surprised they get the coverage they do.

Anyone else feel the same way?