Reply #15: Not in dictionaries it isn't [View All]

[muriel_volestrangler]

10 a : sufficient but not ample : adequate <a fair understanding of the work> b : moderately numerous, large, or significant <takes a fair amount of time>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fair

If you, as a political pollster, expected your interviewees to respond on the number and order of the answers you suggest, then you should have used numbers. That's what they are there for. Sometimes, pollsters mix up the order of the choices, so that there isn't an order bias. Are you saying that an interviewee should add up the number of choices given, work out where the median is, and then base their answer on that?

Words, on the other hand, have meanings. And dictionaries do their best to record the meanings people understand for words. 'Fair', in all its other meanings, is a positive word.

In my general conversation, 'fair' is slightly positive. And in the conversation of others on this thread too.

Perhaps we've found a significant problem in polling here. Are pollsters out of touch with typical people? Do they have specialised meanings for words, and don't realise that others haven't picked up on their new meanings?