The use of SLOPS indicates the desperation and/or ignorance of the survey researchers who use them. The following is a letter I sent to the editor of Quality Progress magazine in response to an article on outsourcing based on results of a SLOP.
The letter was accepted for publication and is available at: http://asq.org/quality-progress/2011/09/qp-inbox.html As you will notice, authors of other letters on the SLOP-based article do not recognize the uselessness of Internet surveys and accept the SLOP-based information. I believe the publication of my book, The Problem with Survey Research (Transaction Publishers, February 2012) will start a conversation that will significantly erode confidence in all types of survey research; not just SLOPS.
Seibert and Schiemann’s online survey-based article on outsourcing, “Reversing Course?” (July 2011, pp. 34-43) provides us with an opportunity to reassess this type of survey; appropriately dubbed, SLOPS (self-selected opinion polls). SLOPS are notoriously unrepresentative (or of unknown and unknowable representativeness) and, therefore, answers produced by SLOPS are “entirely useless for anything other than entertainment”; thus useless for those who want to know about types and effects of outsourcing. Unrepresentative results cannot be generalized to whole populations (manufacturing industries, aerospace, and others listed in Table 1). Answers of an unrepresentative sample merely indicate what that particular group of respondents said. SLOPS shouldn’t be used in serious investigations.
(Above quote from: Irving Saulwick and Denis Muller, “The slippery world of polls, slops and worms”, http://www.crikey.com.au/2007/10/24/the-slippery-world-of-polls-slops-and-worms/ Retrieved 7/29/2011.)
