Self-selecting surveys and the BBC

To reiterate: we cannot make inferences from self-selecting surveys.

On the BBC website, a headline proclaims:

Yorkshire strength of identity revealed by survey answers

This was a self-selecting survey. Its responses do not — and cannot — reveal aspects of the Yorkshire identity.

The ‘Big Yorkshire Conversation’ survey being open was the topic of another article. This was on the BBC website on 2nd May:

Big Yorkshire Conversation survey asks ‘What is Yorkshireness?’

That article was explicit about the nature of the survey:

About 500 replies had already been received and as the “bigger the sample the better”, he hoped that number would at least double.

The survey was launched in April and is open to anyone and due to finish mid-May.

Self-selecting surveys are not reliable

A self-selecting survey involves participants choosing whether to take part. A person puts themselves into the sample. There is no random selection from a list of potential respondents.