UTS-AEI

journalists often write about public opinion polls, which are designed to measure the public's attitudes about an issue or idea. Some of the most high-profile polls center on elections and politics. Newsrooms tend to follow these polls closely to see which candidates are ahead, who's most likely to win and what issues voters feel most strongly about. Other polls also offer insights into how people think. For example, a government agency might commission a poll to get a sense of whether local voters would support a sales tax increase to help fund school construction. Researchers frequently conduct national polls to better understand how Americans feel about public policy topics such as gun control, immigration reform and decriminalizing drug use. When covering polls, it's important for journalists to try to gauge the quality of a poll and make sure claims made about the results actually match the data collected. Sometimes, pollsters overgeneralize or exaggerate their findings. Sometimes, flaws in the way they choose participants or collect data make it tough to tell what the results really mean. Below are 11 questions we suggest journalists ask before reporting on poll results. While most of this information probably won't make it into a story or broadcast, the answers will help journalists decide how to frame a poll's findings - or whether to cover them at all.

Last week, the American Cancer Society published new guidelines that call for colorectal cancer screening to begin at age 45 - five years earlier than the group had previously recommended. But some experts are saying not so fast. The new recommendation was made in reaction to increasing rates of colorectal cancer among people younger than 50. But while the rise in cancers among this younger age group is troubling, this new recommendation was made before we know what's behind the new trend. And it's not clear that screening can help.It makes intuitive sense to respond to increasing rates of colon cancer among young people by lowering the screening age, said Michael Hochman, director of the the Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science at the Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles. "But if I had a quarter for every time in medicine that we were tricked by an idea with intuitive appeal, I'd be a rich man," Hochman said.

Interesting article discussing how ai is being used in medical diagnoses

Great podcast from our own 2ser & UTS Business School! "latest episode of #ThinkBusinessFutures @2ser, with Dr Geetanjali Saluja @UTSMarketing @UTS_Business, discussing her research into moral decision making, and Adam Ferrier, author of 'The Advertising Effect: How to Change Behaviour'" Discusses some of the framing, cognitive bias, and their impact on decision making that we talked about in class

A great video example discussing a contentious issue (coal consumption) using the data!

Some great quotes in this piece! The language of politics warps our democracy again and again, as in this tax calculation. The media must unpack statistics Last week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Health Foundation published a report on funding for health and social care. One figure from the report was repeated across the headlines. For the NHS to stay afloat, it would require "£2,000 in tax from every household". Shocking stuff!If you're sitting at a bar with a group of friends and Bill Gates walks in, the average wealth of everyone in the room makes you all millionaires. But if you try to buy the most expensive bottle of champagne in the place, your debit card will still be declined. The issue to be addressed, and one to which there is no fully correct answer, is how we can put numbers into a context that enables people to make informed choices. Big numbers are hard to conceptualise - most of us have no intuitive understanding of what £56bn even looks like.

There's a form of casual violence that kills 1.25 million people a year (3 times more than malaria) and injures up to 50ODI roads cover million more. 90% of the deaths are of poor people (usually men) in poor countries. No guns are involved and there's lots of things governments can do to fix it. But you'll hardly ever read about it in the development literature, although road safety did make it into the Sustainable Development Goals (as did everything else, it has to be said) - targets 3.6 and 11.2 for SDG geeks. So hats off to ODI (again) for not only painstakingly building the case for taking action on a major cause of death and misery in poor countries (see below), but also exploring the politics and institutions that so far have prevented governments from taking action.

Interesting discussion of evidence on what does, and does not, work in tackling gender bias in recruitment and management processes. Evidence shows that skills-based assessment tasks (where candidates are given tests that replicate the work they'll actually do on the job) and structured interviews (where all candidates are given the same questions in the same order) have a positive impact on diverse recruitment. Unstructured interviews are more likely to allow unfair bias to creep in. Making promotion and pay processes more transparent can reduce pay inequality: when decisions are reviewed by others, managers realise they need to be objective and evidence-based. Evidence also shows women ask for less money than men. To encourage them to negotiate more, employers should make the possible salary range for roles clear. Studies indicate that women are put off negotiating when they're not sure what a reasonable offer is. "A lot of employers are genuinely really keen to reduce the gender pay gap, and also want to show they're making a change. But they're starved for information about what is likely to work,"

Interesting discussion of a contentious issue (although a little light on evidence!!) Tallinn, known for its digital government and successful tech startups, is often referred to as Europe's innovation capital. Now celebrating five years of free public transport for all citizens, the government is planning to make Estonia the first free public transport nation. Allan Alaküla, Head of Tallinn European Union Office, shares some valuable insights for other cities.

As students from privileged backgrounds flock to schools that were supposed to be the ultimate symbol of egalitarianism, experts fear they may be reinforcing class and cultural divisions

ASCO's news release about the screening study laments the "unfortunate" low rate of lung cancer screening and calls for an awareness campaign to encourage more smokers to get screened. Missing is discussion of legitimate reasons smokers might have to decline screening including substantial harms and a modest benefit. Following ASCO's lead, Bloomberg and HealthDay both echoed dramatic language about the finding without providing any perspective from independent experts who might voice reservations about screening.

Interesting discussion of a contentious issue related to the idea of a 'basic income' (but here, in a development context). Martin Ravallion (former Chief Economist of the World Bank, now at CGD) published a useful paper this week asking exactly this question. As he says, there's no simple answer - which is why the question is so interesting. Both 'the right to work' and 'the right to income' aim to secure a more fundamental right: freedom from poverty. Workfare has a long history, notably in India, where the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) guarantees (in theory) up to 100 days work per year, paid at a minimum wage, to anyone who requests it. Cash transfers (often with conditions) have expanded enormously in recent years, while the hot topic of Universal Basic Income (UBI) has advocates across the political spectrum. Which of these approaches is most cost-effective? Ravallion sets out the arguments clearly.

Australia should revamp how it selects major transport projects, so that governments can better know which new roads and railways are worth building and avoid squandering billions of dollars of public money on the wrong projects. The 'discount rate' Australian governments have applied to assess the value of proposed projects has been stuck at 7 per cent since at least 1989, even though the price of money has fallen from about 8 per cent to 1 per cent since then.

Exhorted by President Trump, federal administrators and many Republican state officials are drafting rules requiring people to work in exchange for Medicaid, housing aid and food assistance. But what happens when the poor live where work is hard to find? In Michigan, the state's Senate has passed a proposal that would exempt Medicaid recipients from a work requirement partly on the basis of geography - if they live in a county where unemployment exceeds 8.5 percent. Michigan's approach, critics point out, would mean that poor, mostly white rural counties are exempted, but not the predominantly black, economically troubled cities of Detroit and Flint.

The New York Times has run a couple of pieces comparing university tuition fees in America with the US, UK, and other systems around the world. These pieces look at the advantages and disadvantages of the different systems (with Australia coming out as having some clear benefits)

The benefits and harms of medical marijuana can be debated, but more states are legalizing pot, even for recreational use. A new evaluation of marijuana's risks is overdue. Last year, the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering released a comprehensive report on cannabis use. At almost 400 pages long, it reviewed both potential benefits and harms. Let's focus on the harms.

Nine in ten people around the world breathe air containing high levels of pollution, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO). The agency estimates that pollution causes 7 million deaths each year. The latest WHO figures measure the amount of pollutants in the air in more than 4,300 cities, towns and other settlements in 108 countries around the world. More cities than ever are now monitoring their air quality.

On Friday, the Australian Taxation Office, as it does every April, released the latest batch of annual taxation statistics. And as ever, the data was used in rather contorted ways to suggest the budget needed to reduce the level of taxation paid by the wealthiest and to make it seem like the richest were the ones doing it tough. The other old chestnut that got a run in the Australian is that more school teachers actually use negative gearing than company executives. Again, is it really a shock that "while 72,000 investors were listed as company executives, 99,000 people claiming rental losses on their tax returns were either teachers, nurses or midwives"? Given there are about 300,000 more people working as teachers, nurses or midwives than there are company executives, does anyone really think that because 27,000 more of them might use negative gearing is proof of anything? The crucial thing is not the total number, but the proportion of teachers and nurses (and any other profession) who use negative gearing.

EVERYONE HAS A THEORY about who's to blame for the housing shortage that's driving up prices and chasing Bay Area families out of the region. A new poll offers surprising insights into where most of us point the finger: not at the government officials who control what homes are built where, but at the tech companies that have flooded this region with jobs and the real estate developers trying to maximize profits.

Women continue to earn less than men, for a variety of reasons. Discrimination is one, research shows. Women are also likelier than men to work in lower-paying jobs like those in public service, caregiving and the nonprofit sector - and to take time off for children. Employers often base a starting salary on someone's previous one, so at each job, the gender pay gap continues, and it becomes seemingly impossible for women to catch up. Salary history bans are too new for researchers to have studied their effects extensively. But other research has found that people are overly influenced by an opening bid, something social scientists call anchoring bias. This means that if employers learn an applicant's previous salary and it's lower or higher than they were planning to offer, it's likely to influence their offer.