Data Myth Busting: Why aren’t people going to Disneyworld?
“People say they won't take Disney vacations this year because it's too expensive — not because they feel it's unsafe”
That’s the headline I saw in my Twitter feed this morning and I thought: What? That’s so interesting. Tell me more.
Alas, I dug into the article (you can read it here) and only to be disappointed. Yet another case of poll data being reported in a way that makes me fairly certain it is completely not true.
Now, I haven’t seen the exact copy of the survey - so maybe, just maybe, it WAS good survey with good questions and the results were just reported in a wonky way… maybe. If someone gets their hands on a copy of it… I’d love to see it.
Here is a recap of how the survey went down:
First people were asked if they would visit a Disney park this year.
Then, presumably for those who answered no, they were asked about the reason why they wouldn’t.
Then, the article digs into the results. First focusing on financial reasons (it being too expensive):
“More than 50% of respondents both with children and without said they feel Disney vacations are too expensive "in general" to warrant a trip. Over 32% of participants with children said they'd like to visit a Disney property but can't afford to.”
Okay, I get it - the people surveyed think Disney is expensive.
Then, the article turns to the stats about COVID:
“Overall, almost 42% of participants of Insider's survey said they're still concerned about the pandemic in relation to a Disney vacation. Another 29% said they're concerned that not enough people have received COVID-19 vaccines yet.”
Okay… so some people participating in the survey are concerned about COVID. Fair enough.
What I’m not seeing is any data that says people are deciding not to take a trip to Disney this year because of money AND not because of COVID.
If you look at the percentages reported in the paragraphs above, you can see that these stats had to come from different sets of questions (if you add up all those percentages is more than 100%).
Why does this matter? Because if you want to say that people aren’t taking Disney vacations because it is too expensive NOT because it’s unsafe due to COVID, you need to ask people to make a direct comparison between these reasons.
For example:
Why aren’t you taking a Disney Vacation this year?
- It’s too expensive.
- I’m worried about COVID
- (insert other possible reason below).
If the survey did ask the question in that way, why did they not report those results? If it didn’t… Well, we can know that some people aren’t going to Disney because of money and that some people are still worried about COVID but we can’t know that the reason they aren’t going to Disney is because of the expense and not COVID.
We need more responsible and accurate reporting of information. Just sayin’.
