Posts Tagged ‘confidence’

When I was a teen I worked as a carpenter’s helper in a cabinet shop.  Good experience overall, ended up keeping all fingers but nearly lost a thumb.

I remember Joe Balino (pronounced Baleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeno).  Picking me up like a rag doll and carrying me to the hospital where eight stitches closed the wound but not the pain of the memory.

Joe had warned me of how quickly a table saw could make a small mistake into a big one.

He had also told me to measure twice and cut once.  As I had slid that piece of walnut into the saw I wasn’t focused on the possibilities of injury.  Instead my head was someplace else.  Walnut is an expensive wood and Joe trusted me not to waste any.  I wasn’t sure of my measurements and I was focused questioning the cut I was making.  Would I be wasting precious material?  Losing Joe’s confidence?

I had measured once carefully.  I had skipped the second step.  I knew the rules and I was breaking them.  I was relying on my skill of measurement and assuming that nothing had gone astray.

Joe never let me into the shop again.  Not even to sweep the floors.  He wasn’t a cruel man but I had lost his confidence and represented too big of a risk.

So it goes.

None of us are confident in our online sampling frame.   Yet we have confidence that our questionnaires will turn the trick for us.  In the thirty years of helping people collect data I have seen them all.   Most don’t belong in the shop.

Do you?  If you aren’t distracted by the weakness in the online sampling frame than you are prone to disaster and if you are, then you will watch your own undoing.

We must begin to measure the quality of our sampling frame.  Then, and then only, can we entrust it as a vehicle for the measurement of the questions that our clients put to us.  If you don’t want to adhere to that simple concept than maybe you ought to re-consider if you belong in the shop in the first place.  After all, you are a danger to yourself and, I’m sorry, a hazard to all the rest of us.