Developing Appropriate Research Instruments to Unearth the Truth

To judge voters’ inclinations, political opinion polls are conducted nationally covering rural and urban constituencies. The common practice is to elicit perceptions about parties and candidates using semantic differential scales. Invariably “can’t say” amounts to 30-40% or even higher among rural folks. This makes it difficult to judge the inclination towards any party for a significantly large segment of the voters.

It is mainly due to inadequate knowledge and perception among rural voters and inability to respond to semantic differential scales owing to low literacy.

We solved it with our ingenious ‘Rasagulla-Idli-Laddoo-Vadapao’ scale. Illiterate women voters when asked to distribute 10 rasagullas in a Bengal village, 10 idlis in a Tamil Nadu village, 10 ladoos in UP village and 10 barrapaos in a Maharashtra village according to her preference various political parties, had no difficulty in allotting them to parties and keeping the balance for her family.

Today, “Can’t Say” amounts to less than 10% reflecting vital information that these voters really don’t have any perceptions about political parties. It also ensures higher accuracy in prediction of likely outcome.