The Language Bias Of Researchers & Pollsters.

Millions of American consumers’ views and opinions are typically either never counted or misunderstood. Picture that being 49% of a population larger than Canada’s.

This situation relates to Peter Coy’s article, “Pollsters Score Low with the Public”. The article mentions in reference to popular belief that polls’ results are usually not representative: “researchers argue that 1,000 people is plenty, as long as they’re randomly chosen.” Well, pollsters may randomly select a sample, but that is useless if the interviewers cannot fully communicate with a significant cross section of the sample.

What happens when the interviewer only speaks English and the person on the other line only speaks Spanish? In most cases the call is terminated, labeled LB (language barrier) and is put back in queue to be reassigned to a native speaker. The problem with this data gathering method is that, statistically speaking, callers will not answer the phone the second time around thereby further reducing the Latino – Hispanic sample size for the poll. You can begin to see the weakness in referring to such poll as indicative of a ‘national representative sample’.

What if the poll is being conducted in a US region known for having a majority Hispanic/Latino population, such as the Southern California public (or Miami, Southern Texas, New York City, etc)? You would observe at least 30% of the sample being flagged as a non-response due to language barrier! Is that representative? (Talk about oxymoronic science) How valid can the results be if the supposedly representative survey misses a third of the opinions!?

“…it’s important for researchers to ask questions in a neutral way and reach a representative cross-section of the public.” Mr. Coy alludes to the scientific responsibility of designing an unbiased survey and counting, by representation, almost everybody.

In the real multicultural US world, what is neutral? While “white” is a color for some, it means “not of color” for others. Furthermore, in order to speak with “the representative cross-section of the public”, national surveys and polls would need to be conducted by a completely dual-speaking/bi-lingual interviewing pool of people.

Having, fully-fluent in reading, writing and speaking, in Spanish and English, interviewing staff, makes it possible to switch back and forth, instantly, between Spanish and English, at the first intercept or call. This decreases the chance of miscommunication that occurs when forcing respondents to speak English when that is not a dominant language.

Needless to say, you get a much higher response rate when the respondent can converse in the language of choice, even if that is Spanglish, (a common way of speaking, for many US Hispanics, among speakers who perceive that they can understand each other in either and both Spanish and English).

Interviewers are not the only ones that need to be bilingual. Supervisors, trainers, and managers also need to be bi-lingual. How else can the research company know their interviewers are being truly fluent in both languages! Additionally, how else could Spanish interviews be monitored, as are English interviews?

For example, an English speaking supervisor would not be able to catch when the Cuban interviewer interpreted mueble to mean furniture, when the Mexican respondent used mueble meaning “vehicle”. (Similar situation to bad meaning good in ‘teen speech’). Standard quality control measures need to extend to Spanish and Spanglish interviews as well.

Doesn’t it make sense for bilingual interviewing to be a standard practice for polling and surveying today’s USA? Unfortunately, of the thousands of telephone call centers in the US, only a handful has this capability….

Quien bien atiende bien aprende, si ademas de oir entiende.

Who pays attention, learns well, if besides hearing, understands.

Hay un dicho que dice que todo fue dicho…

pero como nadie escucha es preciso comenzar de nuevo…

There is a saying that says that all has already being said…

But since nobody listens it is of essence to commence all over again…

About the author:

Suzanne Irizarry de López is a seasoned marketing and communication professional who has been researching Hispanic/Latino consumers for over 12 years. Her career spans over a wide variety of private sector and non-profit industries from Hispanic researcher for Savitz, Common Knowledge, Cultural Access, and Cheskin, to interpreter for the City of Dallas Municipal Court and Children’s Hospital, social worker, educator, and journalist.

Suzanne recently joined Bilingual Research Services, a telephone interviewing center that specializes in language of choice interviewing for the new general market. Send your comments or questions to Su*****@*************ch.com