ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

28% OF TWITTERERS ARE GAY, 5% mostly gay, 12% mostly straight and 54% straight, according to Bruce Wagner’s “Are You Gay?” twtpoll:

IN CONTRAST, 9% (not 28% as above) are gay, 3% are mostly gay, 6% are bisexual, 19% mostly straight, 61% straight and 2% others, according to a similar poll by Dave Munger on his “Cognitive Daily” blog:

According to “Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age, United States, 2002” (cited by The Neurocritic but link is broken now):

Sexual orientation

In response to a question that asked, “Do you think of yourself as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or something else?” 90 percent of men 18-44 years of age responded that they think of themselves as heterosexual, 2.3 percent (not 28% or even 9% as above) of men answered homosexual, 1.8 percent bisexual, 3.9 percent “something else,” and 1.8 percent did not answer the question. Percents for women were similar.

Is there a selection bias, as claimed by The Neurocritic (linked above)?

selection bias

Selection bias comes in two flavors: (1) self-selection of individuals to participate in an activity or survey, or as a subject in an experimental study; (2) selection of samples or studies by researchers to support a particular hypothesis.

If so, how much of a bias is there?

Is this also an indication that more gays and bisexuals are active online (as compared to straights), especially on Twitter (a simple microblogging tool), as compared to Cognitive Daily (which carries daily posts on psychology, a ‘heavier’ subject)? 

ANYWAY, HOW RELIABLE ARE ONLINE POLLS? According to Slate, online polls are NOT an accurate measure of public opinion because of the following reasons:

1. Respondents are not randomly selected. Poll organizers mailed ballots to people on a list of names.
2. Socioeconomic bias. Many have criticized online polling because Internet users tend to be wealthier, more educated, and more male than the population at large.
3. Questions and answers are always given in the same order. Pollsters speak of both the “primacy effect” and the “recency effect,” meaning that the first and last choices are more likely to be chosen, particularly when there is a long list of possible answers. In addition, the order in which questions are given can affect the respondents’ answers.

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Other factors could include:

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And just two more questions: “How gay is Facebook?” and “How gay is the Internet?”