Has anyone undertaken a study of what people who start polls do with the results?
Do they write term papers or blogs or amuse themselves viewing the results or forget about it altogether never returning to the results? Something else I never thought about?
I recently started a poll on the Pink Floyd’s best album. What did I do with the results? Nothing - except file them away in my memory banks. I was curious. My curiosity was satisfied.
It’s a bit like asking what people do with any communication here. I guess it’s partly to satisfy the need for interaction and partly to learn about other people’s views. Very rarely it is to actually get an answer for something that will have a practical outcome.
35% Are surprised with the results
20% Are glad that they aren’t the only weird ones
30% Disagree strongly with the majority opinion and remain in denial
10% Never come back to their poll
12% Forget to include an important answer choice
17% Create a biased poll, so all responses are useless by default
23% Start the poll in the wrong forum and then cry when it’s moved
0.001% Start a thread in ATMB asking what the others do with their results
You should have made this a poll thread, and then you could answer your own question.
My first poll, “Ladies: How does Barry White music affect you?” is/was strictly for personal amusement.
You got that right!
I only format a question as an automated poll because I find the process of crafting the options amusing.
I send them off to NASA for analysis.
I carefully collate the answers to every poll, run statistics on them, and feed them into my AI for the Perfect Robotic Sock.
MwaaaHaaaaaHaaaa!!! Ha!!!
Here’s a serious answer from one who’s put up several polls by now.
Polls get to the nitty gritty of issues. If you really want to know what people think of something, or have a particular reaction to an issue, or if there’s some “weight of numbers” issue you’d like a clear picture on, go with the poll.
If you want a lot of name-calling and “I’m more qualified to answer the question than you” rhetoric, open it up in Great Debates. If it actually has ONE correct answer, go to GQ.
If it’s to see the range of actual preferences, try a poll.
One case in particular had to do with Favorite Topics in CS. Aside from all the negative opinions people had over the various ways Cafe Society forum gets used, the poll told me, at least, that there was much sound and fury signifying very little.
The risk you take with a poll (and I’ve had several) is that people may not even care enough about the issue to vote. Then you only know your idea of something people might be interested in – is wrong! 
I understood that all this information would somehow be included in the Census results. Right?
Or at the very least it would appear on YouTube or Entertainment Tonight.
Just pray that CNN doesn’t see it or they will break some news with it.
The results I would guess are largely ignored for some of the polls- the poll is intended to show how cool the originator is rather than any genuine interest in the outcome.
I’ll go back into my shell now.