As discussed in a recent article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution i-neighbors continues to grow and prosper with over 3,000 neighborhoods up and running in the United States and Canada. I was also excited by a report from Patti Waldmeir of the Financial Times who describes the pre and post election aftermath of a Bush-Kerry debate on her neighborhood email list (not i-neighbors). Interesting to note that political discussions – although usually local politics – often crop into neighborhood email lists. These discussions are usually accompanied by a debate about the appropriateness of talking about political issues with neighbors – can you think of anything more appropriate! The good news is that I have yet to see such a neighborhood email discussion turn into a flame war. In the end it general increases familiarity with local people, local issues and possibly even leads to a few new social ties. (Important note, I have seen things turn ugly on local bulletin boards and neighborhood lists that grow to big – my advice continues to be that neighborhood lists should only be about 300 homes.)
A small group of reporters form the New York Times recently replicated Stanley Milgram\’s subway seat experiment. Experimenters entered the New York City subway and very simply asked fellow riders to give up their seat. Well, maybe not so simply, as it was back in Milgram\’s day a majority of subway riders did vacate their seats for seemly no reason when asked to do so, but as with the original experiment one of the most interesting aspects of the study was the anxiety experimenters experienced as a result of making the request. My research assistants and I experienced similar anxiety in 2001 when we replicated the lost letter study, \”loosing\” a letter in a store was surprisingly difficult, we all felt like \”reverse shoplifters.\” Article
Pollsters have long accepted a margin of error in polling as a result of that segment of the population that could not afford or rejected home phones. However, for what I assume is the first time in recent decades, there in an increasing trend of rejecting home phone ownership, particularly amongst younger adults. Wired News and the San Francisco Chronicle have recently published articles on this subject. These articles estimate that 3-5% of Americans (growing to 15% by 2009) use a mobile phone as their only phone. Survey companies are prohibited from using automated dialing equipment to call wireless numbers. The articles suggest that telephone polling may be nearing an end, but I would ask, how reliable has telephone polling been in recent years as response rates decline and pollsters survey only those who are home, board and not watching television?