Age and voting patterns

A poll conducted by Gallop telephone interviews with 21,082 registered voters, aged 18 and older, conducted on March 7-31, 2008, clearly shows that age is directly realted to voting patterns. The polls suggests that younger voters tend to prefer Obama, the younger presidential candidate whereas older voters tend to prefer older candidate McCain. 57% of those polled between the age 18 and 29 support obama, those aged 30 to 39 support the two candidate equally and voters above taht age range slighlty favor McCain.
In terms of gender (Clinton - McCain, Clinton- Obama) this difference seems to be less. SUggesting that age might play a more important role in voting than gender.

survey on Age Discrimination

I came across this survey while researching for my blog. It reports that 47% percent of workforce have reported experincing discrimination at workforce. 52% cite age as their top reason.

Other are:

gender (43%)

race (32%)

religion (9%)

disability (7%)

http://www.agingworkforcenews.com/2008/07/survey-age-dicrimination-leading-form.html

Another article points out how it is a rare feat being employed at an IT firm after turing 50 (it cites Bill Gates as an example.) In a survey done involving 500 IT workers, 71% believed that employee at these firm treat people less favorably based on their age. People in higher position are even more discriminatory. 79% of these respondants reported that senior management are to be blamed. "Recruitment, redundancy, pay, promotion, and training are the most important areas where discrimination exists" identified as some of the important areas.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/data-management/survey-highlights-age-discrimination-in-it-856

Why proving age discrimination at employement isnt easy?

As we learned in class, it isnt easy to eliminate or even catch falsified information provided by survey takers or interviewees. "Age" is one of the most pervasive forms of discrimination. One might hink why so as we all age.

Academic surveys and polls conducted measuring large samples via quantitative methods can be easily misleading. In a sense, a survey taker, at home or phone, can lie about preferences due to non attitudes and trying to cover biases. Similarly, in an interview, lack of annonimity and direct contact with the interviewer might induce false answers to avoid answering an a manner that is deemed unsuitable.

One way to go might be analysing exsisting data such law suits filed citing age discrimination, reviewing resumes for evidences of age-proofing or maybe analysing job posting/descriptions to see if any such overt or covert form of discrimination exists.

Having worked in a marketing research firm, I have doubts about how accurate the surveys and polls they conduct are. Usually, they advertise something in a newspaper or media outlet such as "Craigslist". Problem here is that the potential surveyers are being lured with payment to participate in this process. Some might even make a side job out of this.
In a very recent article published in ABC news website, Standford researchers were quoted as being very skeptical about such surveys. A comparative analysis was done to see if there were any differences in results produced from non-probability survey versus a probability based survey. The later one was obviously found to be less accurate.
Even though the marketing resaerch firms' credibility is questionable, companies pay big amount of money for these types of services. The article reads, "online market research will reach $2.05 billion in the United States and $4.45 billion globally this year, and that data gathered online will account for nearly half of all survey research spending."


http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2009/09/study-finds-trouble-for-internet-surveys.html