A whopping 92.36 percent of all political and social surveys carried out by newspapers, government departments and organizations in the development sector are unreliable and 87.34 of the statistics that they cite are fabricated, according to our latest survey.
An overwhelming majority of Pakistanis – 75.33 percent – hates filling survey forms, reveals the poll designed by veteran journalists and social scientists who spent weeks filling thousands of survey forms to ensure that people from all walks of life and all strata of the society were given appropriate representation.
“It’s not that I don’t respond to any surveys,” disclosed a university student, asking not to be named. Rights groups say students are amongst the worst victims of surveys, often forced to fill forms before or after class by teachers in brutal cases of abuse of authority that continue to go on unchecked in schools and universities. “I just circle random options and get done with them as quickly as possible.”
A meagre 6.66 percent believe it is a fun activity to fill survey forms with wrong, mostly ridiculous, answers, down from 23.41 percent percent last year and significantly less than than 60.45 percent who found it amusing to ruin people’s surveys in 2002. “Okay, it used to be funny in the beginning,” explained an executive in his mid-thirties, “but now its just lame.”
As many as 18 percent of the respondents declined to respond. “Oh no! Not another survey form! Seriously, pick up your papers and man purse, and get the hell out of here!” one respondent was of the opinion.
According to the poll, 67.45 of volunteers and research assistants who are tasked to get the forms filled said they were not satisfied with their job. The remaining 32.55 declined to respond to our questionnaire.
The approval rating of these volunteers and research assistants took yet another plunge this year and hit the lowest-ever 1.56 percent. A significant 88.42 percent of the respondents expressed disapproval of the researches who design questionnaires. “If you’re gonna begin with asking me about my gender and then my contact details, and your volunteers look like desperate stalkers, then please say in your report that all your respondents were men,” a housewife elaborated. The rest of the respondents declined to answer the question about how the questions were worded, saying they did not understand the question.
The number of respondents who did not return the pen after filling in the questionnaire form was at an all-time high this year at 98.38 percent. “Oh, sorry, I forgot,” one respondent divulged to this scribe. According to the poll, men are more likely to run away with pens than women. “This is a troubling piece of data,” one social scientist said, “considering men do not do any significant reading or writing activity.”
About 49 percent of the respondents were as skeptical about the survey as the other 51 percent. Less than 27 percent of the respondents said surveys were designed to ensure that they include the opinions of the marginalized, the poor, and the people living in rural areas of the country. The rest, slightly more than 73 percent, did not respond because they could not read or write.
In what analysts are calling a dramatic new insight, the study shows 95.24 percent of all surveys are attempts by the government, financial organizations, liberal and left-leaning non-profit groups, and newspaper journalists to reduce people to numbers and statistics and use them to prove and propagate their own ideologies. “The point is to give voice to the marginalized,” explains one social researcher. “To give voice to the people whose opinions are never given the significance in academia that they deserve. Such as myself.”
A staggering 96.05 of the final reports, according to the study, are seen as reliable only by people whose existing opinions are corroborated by the results.

 The author has a degree in Poetics of Prophetic Discourse and works as a Senior Paradigm Officer.

harris@nyu.edu

@cyborgasms