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Arthur Wang: Affirmative action stats valid because of established methodology

By Arthur Wang

May 27, 2015 12:07 a.m.

I approach affirmative action as an academic rather than a partisan, so it is disappointing that Vijay Chokal-Ingam has chosen to engage in the topic, in a response to my Thursday post on the matter, by describing a very broad coalition of Asian American groups as “left-leaning” and nothing more.

In addition, I find the inclusion of his “true story” of masquerading as a black applicant to medical school an odd one, especially given that it appears to be a better example of the pitfalls of ignoring the scientific method rather than some smoking gun that affirmative action is discriminatory.

Indeed, as Chokal-Ingam points out, affirmative action is so controversial and so often misunderstood to the occasional benefit of both opponents and supporters, that survey-question phrasing is contentious and can dramatically affect results.

I should acknowledge that the field poll data by Karthick Ramakrishnan used in my column is biased – as all surveys are. In this case, the poll fails to account for the 40-plus percent of eligible Asian American voters who are not registered. The poll’s line of questioning, “Do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women, and other minorities get better jobs and education?” however, is perhaps one of the least biased approaches to addressing the policy.

The criticisms leveled against the phrasing are that it conflates affirmative action practices in education and employment. But the policy was expressly established via executive actions during the 1960s to address the latter before schools used it for the former.

Omitting any definition of affirmative action in his poll by simply asking, “Do you support affirmative action?” or “Do you believe affirmative action should be abolished?” may appear to be less biased. Academic research drawing on the UCLA Cooperative Institutional Research Program freshman survey, which adopts the latter wording, suggests that Asian college students are either split even or mildly supportive of the policy.

Such phrasing, however, leaves it to the respondent to define what affirmative action exactly is. This allows powerful mythologies to shape respondent attitudes about a poorly understood policy, as UCLA education scholars Linda Sax and Marisol Arredondo noted. These misconceptions include the belief that affirmative action creates quotas – quotas were banned in 1978 – or that it makes race one of the principal criteria in admission. It does not.

Regardless of survey biases, most of the research and surveying on affirmative action attitudes is pursued with established methodologies, including the use of representative sample sizes. Chokal-Ingam’s sample size for his Almost-Black story, on the other hand, is one.

Political position notwithstanding, one thing about affirmative action is clear: Merely measuring what we think about it can be controversial.

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Arthur Wang | Senior staff
Wang is an Opinion and Quad senior staffer, and a sociology graduate student. He was the Quad editor in the 2015-2016 academic year and an Opinion columnist in the 2014-2015 academic year.
Wang is an Opinion and Quad senior staffer, and a sociology graduate student. He was the Quad editor in the 2015-2016 academic year and an Opinion columnist in the 2014-2015 academic year.
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