Just when I thought that the New York Times was coming away from the dark side.

Beware of their focus group research and opinion pieces

Once again the New York Times has spun its wheels with bogus focus groups and then attempted to justify those studies as providing dependable research.

Today’s opinion column described the latest survey of 13 “Trump voters” to see whether they were happy with what their votes had yielded. It was not surprising to see that in general they were overjoyed with the results of the election and Trump’s dictatorial actions so far. I do feel that focus groups have a place in the research tool kit, but without the clarification during the description of the results that what they found out cannot be projected as revealing what the entire electorate feels about what’s going on these days.

The purpose of focus groups is generally to find out ideas for questions for more general widespread opinion research. Whereas the question, “Did you vote for Trump?”, may indeed yield a group of folks who did so, the broader question, “Why?,” perhaps, should have been the topic for discussion. Beyond that, ferreting out how people came to assess their decision to vote for this or that candidate, is a question for the populace as a whole. Looking back to the focus group the lucky 13 who participated could have been challenged by the group leaders to see the depth of their opinion.

And, if perchance the New York Times was interested in reporting with some degree of accuracy, they would have a very representative sample of voters of many different stripes. More over, they could do a service to their readers, both directly from the paper but wherever the story is printed, by studying why people opted out of voting and how they now feel about their decision. And how would current events shape their vote in subsequent elections, both off-year and presidential?

Unfortunately “All the news that’s fit to print” is a bygone idea. Instead they pass on questionable data to further confuse and upset their readers. A sad day for journalism in America.