That ASH/YouGov survey – so that's how they did it!!
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 8:38 
Yesterday I asked Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH: what question did ASH/YouGov ask to get the response that "Almost two thirds of people support moves to sell cigarettes in plain packaging".
Well, this is how they did it. Researchers showed a pictorial example of a plain pack with a baby and the warning 'Smoking when pregnant harms your baby' and then asked:
The image above is an example of a 'plain standardised pack' based on Australian legislation passed last year (source: ASH, 2012). Thinking about the packaging above, to what extent would you support or oppose the following? Requiring tobacco to be sold in plain standardised packaging with the product name in standard lettering.
Doh!
The manipulation is so over the top that you have to laugh. My next question is: will Tobacco Control stop at nothing to denormalise smokers?
Source: YouGov/ASH Survey Results. Sample size: 10,000 English adults, fieldwork: 27th February to 16th March 2012.
PS. An online poll of around 2,000 adults would typically cost about £3,000. ASH/YouGov polled 10,000. You do the maths.
Simon Clark
I have just picked up a message on voicemail from Martin Dockrell of ASH. It must have been left before he read the post above.
According to Martin, the new survey contains "none of the hypothetical stuff [my italics] that we did in our previous survey".
He then recites the question (which I already knew, having got it from another source) followed by the result, and adds – a little cheekily, I thought:
"I guess we're going to see a correction on your blog. Or not."
I don't know about a "correction", Martin. I'm happy to put the record straight and demonstrate how ASH/YouGov go about their business.
Reader Comments (14)
Cannon to the right of them, Cannon to the left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volleyed and thunder'd..Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death, Rode the six hundred." So wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson on the Charge Of The Light Brigade.
For a personal intervention like that from Debs is remarkable. Considering she blanks most of our emails and refuses to debate matters in public requires comment.
I guess the smoking ban was and is the final straw for many smokers. I think that through blogs and some access to the media a more balanced debate is emerging.
Deborah Arnott when I was on Radio 5 final acknowledged that smokers contribute £10 billion a year in taxes, our messages are getting through.
Well done Simon for smoking out the truth and how loaded it is.
I wonder, if they had used the packs that Australia is actually using (like that eye one that Nicola Roxon is a big fan of), would those polled had chosen differently? I bet they would have.
The nannies are going too far -- give them an inch and they take a light year. We need to change our tactics and go on the attack for once, and it needs to be relentless. We need to adapt and stop being so apathetic, because it isn't working for us. We are losing battles and our liberties because they use fear and deception as weapons very effectively. We need to take them down now.
They begin by sowing the seeds of legitimacy for this packaging by saying this legislation has already been passed in Australia, they had no reason to mention Australia other than to influence peoples' responses. There is no empirical evidence either that smoking harms an unborn child.
The results are quite misleading in themselves. They have added together two sets of figures to get the net result of 62%.
Strongly support = 37%
Tend to support = 25%
What does strongly support mean. Either you support this or not.
What does tend to support mean. Does that mean you aren’t necessarily in favour but at a push you might be, that’s simply ludicrous. Either you use one figure or the other, you can’t use both.
This must mean that those that actually support this measure are actually only 37%.
ASH should have waited at least until somewhere near the end of the consultation to pull off this confidence trick. Had they pretended or faked "the majority want what we do" survey/poll/research after the current on-going debates then people might actually even believe what they say is true and not just made up from the voices in their heads.
But then maybe, they needed to get the scare factor in early in hope of diminishing and denigrating anything that smokers might have to say thereafter.
Do keep it up, ASH, in blocking contact between Govt and grass roots voter, because when the Tories lose the next election, because of the part you've played in faking public opinion, then maybe the incoming Labour Govt once bitten twice shy at losing core voters because of ASH manipulations, might just begin to see that the only way forward, the honest way forward, the right way forward is to listen to BOTH sides of this debate and not to exclude one in favour of another because it gets paid handsomely to lie to push forward a commercial agenda for its sponsors in Big P.
As an ordinary consumer, I would say that neither Big P nor Big T can take the moral high ground and in trying to do so ASH comes across to normal people as just plain dodgy.
.
Using a baby - really ? that is just the limit. What low down tricks will they come up with next. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
At the risk of re-opening the “what have the tobacco companies done for us” debate, this is the kind of area where they could quite legitimately intervene on our behalf (and their own, of course), simply by commissioning a similar study using exactly the same techniques, numbers etc, but designed to ensure a different result – not as a way of saying how many people are against plain packaging but as a way of pointing out how easily any group can get the result they want from so-called “independent” surveys. I know that because of the restrictive advertising legislation they aren’t permitted to take any action which promotes smoking, but surely that legislation doesn’t extend to preventing them from pointing out when the public are being misled or manipulated?
In fact, I think that in general terms, if the tobacco companies were interested in improving their customer relations (which they should be, with the amount of smuggled tobacco now around), then this is the approach they should use – i.e. not to try and take on the antis by direct disagreement, but by making available to the public the very same “research” which the antis have used, and then applying exactly the same methods to come out with the opposite conclusions. Not as a means of saying “We’re right and they’re wrong” but more along the lines of “D’you see what we did there? That’s just what the antis did, too.” The approach these days should not be to convince the public over to the smokers’ side, but to point out to them how deceived they have been if they are on the anti-smokers’ one.
I think that the days of convincing the public that tobacco companies are not the root of all evil are long gone, because that idea has been so heavily indoctrinated into the public’s consciousness, but there is still a great deal that can be done to show that the whole anti-smoking movement is no better, if not worse, so that at least the public can start to understand that if they are forming opinions which are on the side of one or the other, then it’s less a case of siding with the “good” against the “bad” and rather more a case of simply deciding which is the lesser of two evils. This would serve the purpose of starting to bring the anti-smoking movement down (in the public’s estimation) to the same level as the tobacco companies which, after all, is exactly where they should be - because in truth, these days, they really are no better. This “drip-feed” could and should begin now.
The smoking ban has already started this process off (I come across far more people these days who are concerned about groups like ASH and their ilk “going too far” than I ever have in the past), and has been somewhat assisted by other, non-tobacco-related lobby groups trying to jump on the bandwagon in the wake of the ban (the “we’d like some of that” syndrome) and the tobacco companies should take advantage of this in order to establish at least a semblance of that “level playing field” so beloved of the anti-smoking movement in the run-up to the ban. Anti-smoking campaigners have laid themselves dangerously open to being hoist by their own petard through sheer arrogance, the misguided belief that they can do no wrong in the public’s eyes and the conviction that the methods they use to achieve their aims will always go unscrutinised, and the tobacco companies should take full advantage of their complacency to bring the fight back onto a fairer footing.
I bet they won’t, though!
For their next poll, perhaps they'll mock up a pack showing smokers murdering puppies and kittens.
As you say, Alexsis, it would be funny if it wasn't so cynical.
Surely this reflects badly on YouGov.
After all polls are supposed to be conducted in an impartial manner .
What does it say for the credibility of YouGov as a pollster?
Foot.
Gun.
Shoot.
Is that an accurate example of what they expect a plain pack to look like? Not very plain, is it? And, aren't they a bit ahead of themselves when the consultation has only just got underway (rhetorical question)?
ASH admit it is how you word it:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmhealth/485/5112404.htm
There is a name for people who abuse the democratic process so. It starts with 'N' and I will refrain from mentioning it because it upsets Simon....although it seems that FOREST'S celeb-supporters mentioning 'Stalinism' in the same breath as Tobacco Control doesn't embarrass him...
Infact I don't need to make any reference to the originators of phrase "Passive Smoking" because the packet used for the 'poll' speaks volumes to anyone with any knowledge of 20th Century history.
It coudn't be any clearer could it? Maybe if they had written 'German Women Don't Smoke, But Bare Healthy Children' even Simon would have to utter the 'N-word'?
As the parent of a crippled child i find the picture ASH chose to use and the caption particularly offensive. That pic could easily have been of my son in the incubator, several weeks too early and with brain damage. For the record: my wife, his mom, was raised in a non-smoking home, never smoked herself and i didn't smoke in our house either.
I wonder why you haven't published anything about this article, Simon? It worries me no end the misery that is being caused by all this orchestration of people's life choices. Especially at a time when financial and housing worries abound. Yet research is showing that happiness/well-being may well be more critical than anything the materialist paradigm tells us about physical health.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17733371
From the article:
"This revealed that factors such as optimism, life satisfaction, and happiness appeared to be linked associated with a reduced risk of heart and circulatory diseases, regardless of a person's age, socio-economic status, smoking status or body weight."
If you don't choose to post this comment, I do hope you will consider running a piece on this subject, or at least pass this along to Messrs Snowdon and Atherton for consideration. Many thanks.
Yes, I had heard this too, Noodlebug and it makes a lot of sense.
As the article says, those who are optimistic, happy and content, often also lead healthier lifestyles by exercising and eating healthily.
This is the total opposite of what happens to smokers who are being, as just about all smokers are, made out to be pariahs in society. We can feel isolated; we stop going out and even some hide in corners when smoking. Not conducive to being optimistic, happy or content.
I suffer from depression and stress which also affects my husband because I can be difficult to live with due to this illness, which is extremely hard to understand when you, yourself, do not suffer from it. It is extremely hard for sufferers to understand, too.
The not socialising because of the stress it can cause most definitely makes life far more difficult for those with stress and depression, as isolation is one of the worse things for us, however, the additional stress and often feelings of isolation when we try to go out are even harder to deal with.
When the ban first came in (in fact, even leading up to it, once it was decided upon) caused the Mental Health Service within the NHS a tremendous strain as their caseloads doubled, yet they still remain the poor relation within the NHS.
To me, this, apart from anything else, proves that the smoking ban has absolutely NOTHING to do with health improvements as it causes the absolute opposite for many.
As well as the mental health issue, there are many other negatives to the smoking ban regarding optimism, happiness and contentment.
Ultimately, a person is more likely to die in a plane crash than from smoking or from any amount of so called SHS!
As a member of the YouGov panel who receives regular email alerts - I cannot remember getting an alert about this topic - funny that, since my details revealed that I'm a smoker.