[Contributed by Vance] A netter started a petition for REACH to reinstate the survey asking for opinions about LGBT in Singapore. This comes after the survey was taken down due to an “overwhelming” 30 thousand responses.
For those who didn’t get a chance to see the survey, it included questions about what Singaporeans feel about Penal Code 377A. You can see an archived version of the survey here.
This is a critique on how the government collects views from Singaporeans.
The petition starter “I havent respond to 377A survey” asks for the government to get a more representative sample size. This is not about whether or not you support 377A. It is about how we must not let the government think they can use 30,000 people’s views to make a sweeping generalization about how ALL Singaporeans think.
“30,000 people are also random and anonymous. This means that we likely are not having a representative cross-section of the population. The results are definitely not going to be credible! Even more worrying, this survey might be used by the government to justify policy.”
Petition Starter
If the government really wants to listen to what Singaporeans have to say, they should put more effort into properly collecting data. They could choose to leave it up so that more Singaporeans get a chance to respond. Or they can pick a more representative sample from each group of individuals instead of just making it random and anonymous.
We cannot let the government use another badly executed survey to make policy decisions!
