By Kui Jiang    

In the past year, the national economic census conducted by the Chinese government has encountered no small difficulties, with some enterprises refusing the economic census. Officers from National Bureau of Statistics find that there are quite some discrepancies between many statistical data drawn in the economic census and historical materials. Li Deshui, Commissioner of National Bureau of Statistics expressed at the end of last year that the statistics department will not revise the data in order to keep unanimous with the historical materials, since this was directly related to the formulation of the national eleventh five-year plan.

What trouble the present China are not only the numerous difficulties in government's statistical data research, but also the false data flooding in various kinds of social investigation with profits as their target.

The origin of producing trashy data is not merely the problem of investigative technology; the confusions of investigation organizations in trade morals and qualification management leave the normal data collection hard even to take a single step forward. Out of sales purpose, some amateur investigation organizations collect client lists in name of investigation, which has destroyed the reputation of market research and increased the ratio of normal investigation being rejected. These investigation companies sell without restraint information of persons being visited, which has aggravated the inimical feeling of the society towards investigation and more or less influenced all investigation projects, including the national economic census.

Better none than wrong data. It is thought that the proportion of trashy data entering the analysis stage is no less than 60 percent among the data publicly unfolded in China at present.

In recent years, the government has officially prohibited various kinds of selection and rank activities. Therefore, some organizations and individuals that have no idea of investigation knowledge begin to accumulate wealth by replacing evaluations with opinion polls. Some insider reveals that most false opinion polls are used for cooperating with the products propaganda of enterprises, such as: "brands with the highest consumer satisfaction, well-known products in the mind of consumers, the most reliable… in the mind of the people." These investigation contents are all made to measure in order to get economic support from enterprises and the rank has already been decided before the data are gathered. These tacit tricks of business circles yet have enormous harm to consumers.

The average investigation expense of registering one residence at home is from 50 to 120 yuan; if to finish 10,000 samples, the prophase cost of the investigation organization will at least reach over 2 million yuan and organizations that can run social investigation of such input levels are quite few in the country; some opinion poll organizations lack the basic statistics knowledge to such a degree that they collect 200 samples with telephone investigation or even dozens of samples to conclude the opinion polls of certain area. The insufficiency of samples will make the data analysis valueless at all.

At present, false domestic opinion polls basically have no design about samples and they often use newspapers and periodicals to publish the questionnaire. Generally, the retrieving proportion of the questionnaire on the media level in our country is below 10 percent and mostly under 5 percent, i.e. one out of about 20 people will fill in the questionnaire orderly at newspapers and periodicals and send back to the appointed address. And this part of people is mainly retired personnel, students and the unemployed, widely divergent from many of the buyer colonies of "brand products".

The opinion poll has totally entered the operation camera of the investigation organization after the questionnaire is retrieved. In order to cooperate with the future "alternative analysis" and for the related trade, makers of the false data will screen the questionnaire at the very beginning. Checking which is originally used for verifying the validity of the data becomes the dark tache controlling the conclusion and inclination. Therefore, at a lot of investigation result news references, although conclusions brought by the investigation organization are unimaginably queer, they can offer the primitive questionnaire and the primitive database materials.

After entering the course of data analysis, all the data will be distorted at will along with the crazy bargaining between the investigation organization and the enterprise who wants to elevate its public image by opinion polls. No matter what the rank, the income level of the people, the expectation of the people or even the gender proportion are……from the hint in the 1990s to today's unscrupulousness, the industry corruption in the Chinese data industry has probably far exceeded the black whistle in the betting match of Chinese football.

In addition, makers of the false data will usually gloss over its false investigation with "profit as its only target" through a lot of external forces. The common tactics are to invite high-ranking government officials, scholars and celebrities; the presence of government leaders will prove the data to be authoritative and formal; the presence of university professors will prove the research system to be rigorous and scientific; and the presence of famous entrepreneurs can attract the media attention.

The constant destructive operation and the inundation of false data lead the response of Chinese audiences to data to be tamer day by day. According to some optimistic judgment, as the present situation continues, the scale of false opinion polls will shrink day by day even without adaptation of any movements.