Assisted Suicide groups are promoting their cause with remarkably favourable statistics taken from a small number of public opinion polls. (e.g. the Tweet to the right.)
These statistics are so favourable — so often — that they seem quite improbable. These groups rarely mention that three of the main polls were commissioned by Dignity in Dying.
A Leopard Never Changes Its Spots.
The Voluntary Euthanasia Society in Britain was founded in 1935: their stated goal was the legalisation of Euthanasia. ‘Mentally competent persons be allowed by law to request euthanasia, either when taken ill or by advance directive.’ V.E.S. published a book on Euthanasia in 1969 and an expanded version in 1986 called ‘Life and Voluntary Euthanasia’ was compiled by Peter Owen.
In 2006, when the Voluntary Euthanasia Society was 70 years old, it renamed itself to the euphemistic new title of Dignity in Dying. It also euphemised (!) its stated goal of Euthanasia, to the more acceptable term, “Assisted Dying.”
Euphemisms have been very effective for the Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia lobby. (*Euphemism: mild or non-offensive word/s substituted for the more frank or blunt terms which honestly describes something unpleasant or embarrassing.)
Dignity in Dying Public Opinion Polls
Dignity in Dying sponsored two public opinion polls in Britain, both by Populus (the “strategic marketing and HR research and consulting company.” ) Populus reports are now found on the Yonder website because it merged with other companies in 2020.
The first poll was in 2015 with 5018 people. The larger on-line poll of 5695 people was in 2019. (They also commissioned a Canadian IPSOS poll also in 2022.) This article will focus primarily on the 2019 poll.
2015 Dignity in Dying/Populus poll. (127 pages PDF report!)
This poll was critiqued by Dr. Tarek Al Baghal and Alexandru Cernat from the University of Essex in their paper ‘A Methodological Critique of the Dignity in Dying - Populus Poll of March 2015.’ Many criticisms hold for both polls.
2019 Dignity in Dying/Populus Poll. (6-page PDF report.)
Many public opinion polls are taken from only 1000-2000 people, so a poll of ~6000 people is a better sample than average. It may be factual to tout it as “the largest poll ever” …but it is still only ~0.008% of the British population!
The PAID respondents came from the panel ‘members’ who completed Populus polls. (Populus now being Yonder, confirmation of payment of the panel is below. Also, they do not comment on list recruitment/maintenance.)
Curiously, there were only 2 questions in the 2019 poll!
Question 1:
“Currently it is illegal for a doctor to help someone with a terminal illness to end their life, even if the person considers their suffering unbearable and they are of sound mind. A proposed new law would allow terminally ill adults the option of assisted dying. This would mean being provided with life-ending medication, to take themselves, if two doctors were satisfied they met all of the safeguards. They would need to be of sound mind, be terminally ill, and have six months or less to live, and a High Court judge would have to be satisfied that they had made a voluntary, clear and settle the decision to end the life, with time to consider all other options. Whether or not you would want the choice for yourself, do you support or oppose this proposal for assisted dying becoming law?”
COMMENTARY
This is a leading, compound, multi-clause question which ‘begs the answer.’ Obviously many will just say ‘Yes!’
Frequent use of euphemism softens the reality of the subject matter:
“End their life” & “End the life” instead of COMMITTING SUICIDE;
“Assisted dying” instead of ASSISTED SUICIDE or, VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA;
“Life-ending medication” for POISON.
They play the sympathy card of “suffering unbearable” though do not mention that most physical pain can be relieved with modern Palliative Care, nor that physical pain is an infrequent reason for requesting Assisted Suicide / Voluntary Euthanasia.
They suggests that Assisted Suicide is safe because it will have, “met all the safeguards” and is supervised by a “High Court judge.” They do not say that safeguards have failed in most every country like The Netherlands, Belgium and Canada.
Also, the ‘review by a judge’ is likely just a ‘sign-off’ acknowledging all procedural steps have been completed — rather than a formal assessment of the merits of the application.
The scenario tells us there will be plenty of “time to consider all other options.” The waiting time will be whittled down once AS/VE is legal.
The Q is to “allow terminally ill adults the option.” [Option] sounds much more reasonable than ‘allow terminally ill adults [to commit suicide.]’
“Be Terminally Ill.” A similar requirement was removed from Canada’s legislation within 6 years.
People with a high degree of agreeableness will feel tolerant and inclusive by answering ‘Yes.’ They are not asked about the morality of Suicide, nor the morality of letting (or assisting) someone commit suicide.
The Q does not discuss the moral precipice with Assisted Suicide. (For example, Canada recently legalized euthanasia for the mentally ill, to be implemented as of March 2023. The question of euthanizing anorexic women has been floated: next maybe, Gender Dysphoria?)
Question 2:
“If your MP were to vote in support of a change in the law to allow assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults, would you feel more positive or more negative towards them, or would it make no difference to you?”
This hardly needs comment: Dying in Dignity wanted to know how to manipulate politicians. Votes count!
STATISTICAL ISSUES:
Social Class/Grade:
The 2019 poll uses the Social Grading of [A to E] below. A & B together are not likely to skew results but D (Working Class) with E (Unemployed) might. 1481 people in [DE] means that potentially up to 25% of the people used in the poll were Unemployed! (Which makes eminent sense: unemployed people have more time and are ‘incentivized’ to answer polls when paid!)
Scots v. Londoners:
The 2019 poll had 1057 Scots, which is over 18% of poll respondents, thought Scots are only about 7.5% of the total British population. (Curiously, Scots support AS more than other British groups: Londoners the least!)
Credibility Intervals:
The IPSOS 2022 Dying in Dignity survey in Canada provides more specific information and shows that extrapolating opinions from the small numbers of minority groups increases the risk for error. They claim the overall accuracy was “within +/-1.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what the results would have been had all Canadian adults been polled” but note that the ‘credibility intervals’ are wider amongst subsets of the respondents.
“The credibility interval is a range by which the polling estimate can vary.” This means that in the IPSOS 2022 poll these groups can have up to a 10 to 22.8 percentage variation. (Credibility Intervals were not provided with the 2019 data.)
Weighting:
Populus notes the accepted practice of statistically manipulating the results by computer algorithm to match the demographics of the general population (“weighted.”) Weighting to one demographic changes the proportion of others. (Quota’s are another adjustment for issues of age, gender, region and social grade.)
Numbers in age groups from the 2019 Populus / Dignity in Dying poll.
Religion:
The proportion of Christians seems to be WAY over represented when another survey suggests that: “Belief in God or a higher spiritual power was expressed by 28%, four points less than in February 2015…”
https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html
Also Muslims are under-represented being 4.3 % of the population but only 2.2% of poll respondents. (Muslims are generally opposed to Assisted Suicide.) Together, these numbers belie the claims that many religious people support Assisted Suicide.
Numbers in religious groups as noted in the 2019 Populus / Dignity in Dying poll.
The IPSOS poll came to a galling conclusion: “Although Canadians with no religious affiliation tend to have more support for MAID than Canadians who are religious, a strong majority of Catholics and Protestants support the new legislation.” This could only happen if they polled Catholics like Biden & Pelosi (people who claim to be ‘Catholic’…but do not follow the teachings of the Catholic Church.)
Conclusion:
There are many significant weaknesses in all of the Dying in Dignity polls but especially the “largest ever” British poll on Assisted Suicide taken in 2019.
The issues include: a small poll size; the poll being taken from a private list and NOT from the general public; the respondents being *paid* to answer the poll; the group had quota’s and computer ‘weighting’ but then still had major demographic differences to the British population (a higher proportion of Scots and possibly a larger number of unemployed); the poll asked a leading question: credibility intervals were not provided; the question omitted essential information (such as how safety measures will be ignored over time); and they must have polled non-practising Catholics.
These limitations invalidate the 2019 Populus / Dying in Dignity poll on Assisted Suicide.
Kevin Hay
You can follow Kevin on Twitter @kevinhay77