Poll Conclusions Disputed

APA is a scientific as well as a clinical organization, and Psychiatric News needs to evaluate critically the science of its content. The article in the November 17, 2000, issue on APA’s member survey on its campaign guidelines (“Poll Shows Most Members Want Limits on APA Campaign Practices”) lacks that sophistication.

As only 16 percent of APA members responded to the campaign survey, there is no way that its results can be deemed necessarily “valid,” no matter what the polling firm and ad hoc Board committee claimed. (The firm may have its own reasons for touting its survey.) It is possible that only the minority of psychiatrists with strong feelings about limiting campaign practices bothered to return the survey, while the complacent remainder remained silent. Your headline should not have commented on “most members,” whose opinions we cannot know from the poll. If anything, the survey response appears most saliently to reflect the political apathy and lassitude of the membership: election turnout is low, too.