Hi Tim,

You ask some excellent and natural questions. Your questions highlight what is an (unintentionally) opaque process. Let me try to shed some light on the subject. In answer to your questions...

1. If memory serves we have over 40,000 subscribers to the CFA Institute NewsBrief.
2. When we did a subscriber audit we found that the overwhelming majority of subscribers were either CFA charterholders, or candidates for the charter.
*. You are correct that it is not a random sample. For example, you can vote more than once. This is why we do not present the results using standard statistics reporting. We do not represent the data as statistically significant. This is not a function of our desires, but is a function of our third party provider's limitation on their survey function. Though less than ideal, as an organization we like the ability to take quick straw polls, if you will, about what a number of people in the investment space believe at any given moment.
3. See asterisked response above. No, not statistically significant because the sample is not random.
4. The question and possible responses are created each Monday morning by a team at CFA Institute that is around 15 folks. This team is composed of a number of former research analysts, fund managers, market structure experts, and content experts. You can get a sense of who composes the team by the names of those of us that write the poll analysis. Questions are proposed along with responses by a lead author - this week it was me - and then the rest of the team critiques the question and the responses.
5. In this poll I did not propose an 'other' category, and the subsequent critique rounds did not ask for an 'other' category. We do sometimes feature an 'other' category. Usually we add that when we believe that there is not a plurality of responses represented by the answer set proposed, or when we think a question is likely to have an uncertain audience. This is a judgment call based on the group's thinking.
6. Regarding your final question. We are sensitive to question phrasing as well as the possible answers provided. For almost all questions the very consideration you raise is a part of the discussion. Namely, how to make the question and answers as emotion-free as we can. One frequent consideration is that if a question asks for clarification about a piece of 'conventional wisdom' we typically list the 'contrarian' options first to ensure that respondents favoring the 'conventional wisdom' must read through each of the possible responses before responding.

I hope this brings more clarity to the process of our poll authoring, and subsequent analysis.

Yours, in service,

Jason