I am a big fan of the Sunday morning news shows—the ones wherereporters and journalists sit around commenting on the past week'sworth of political news. Occasionally, the host will kick thingsoff with interviews with the hottest politician to get fodder forthe show.

These shows have evolved over the years, expanding significantlyonline. Now anyone with an Internet connection can become a punditin the blogosphere. As a result, no matter what your position onany issue, you can find many compatriots who feel the same way asyou, giving greater weight to that particular opinion than wouldnormally be the case.

You hear a lot about how politicians determine their positionson different issues based upon what the polls say. What I don'tunderstand is, why? Polls have so many variables, from the specificquestions asked and how they are asked to who's doing the askingand who's been chosen to answer the questions.

Related: Read the article by Laura Mazzuca Toops“Agents Prefer Carrier Portals When Placing Personal Business:PLGA.”

Although I'm not a statistician, I have developed and conductedmany surveys. You don't have to be an expert to know that pollingand its results are always subject to interpretation. As myfather-in-law, a retired auditor, said, “Numbers are fungible,”meaning they are interchangeable and subject to explanation. Thisis why I believe we place far too much weight on the results ofsurveys and polling.

This is evident not only in politics, but in our own industry.Insurance is full of surveys studying all aspects of our business.A lot of time and energy has been spent on trying to betterunderstand the mindset of the independent agent, how they makedecisions and choose where to place business, their definition of acompany that's “easy to do business with,” and where they investtheir limited dollars for marketing purposes and technologies toimprove workflow.

Similarly, insurance companies are the focus of many studies todetermine how they spend their IT dollars, their marketing andadvertising budgets and their views on market trends, among manyother topics.

Related: Read the article “Agent Survey RevealsWishes for Carrier Portals.”

Last year I was involved with a survey of independent agents andbrokers who were members of the Personal Lines Growth Alliance. Itwas conducted by Novarica online during the summer. The keyfindings that resulted from the study were, in some respects, lessthan expected. They went against the generally accepted beliefs ofhow agents want to interact with carriers and caused some people toquestion some industry messaging on agency workflow andefficiencies.

The biggest challenge we have is in understanding how tointerpret and weigh the various pieces of information we arebombarded with every day. Information alone is not enough; it takesa knowledgeable perspective of that material to fully grasp itsimpact. That intersection of information and intelligence is wherecommunications and action take place.

So what does that mean? It means we should nottake information on face value. Whether it's the results of anindustry survey or the most recent political poll, we must look atthe elements that went into the findings. Who conducted the survey?What were the questions asked? How many people responded to thequestions? Were there any unknown biases at play?

The PLGA Novarica survey came on the heels of another surveyconducted by the IIABA's Agents Council for Technology (ACT) ofmore than 3,000 agencies and brokerages. That survey confirmed theview that Real Time offers “a more efficient and responsiveworkflow than navigating through various carrier portals.”

Those findings are in contradiction to the results of the PLGANovarica study that indicated “agents prefer to work though acarrier's portal rather than through their own agency managementsystem.” On the surface, you might want say, “What the what?” Butwhen you look at the data with a discerning eye you learn that thelatter survey represents 96 responses versus 3,110 responses forthe earlier one.

Related: Read the article “Survey Shows Agents WantMore Carriers With Real-Time Capabilities.”

The Real Time survey is just the latest of a series of surveysthat goes back to a 2006 survey on carrier communications to whichsome 7,500 independent agents answered questions on how theypreferred to interact with their carriers. That survey led to thecreation of the Real Time/Download Campaign.

My point is not to degrade the validity of the PLGA Novaricasurvey but to underscore the importance and value of taking asensationalized headline with a proverbial grain of salt.

I was an architecture student in college and I always found thatI could best envision and convey my design ideas when I would putthem down on paper; not as a floor plan or elevation but only whenI did perspectives. They gave my imagination an anchor in realityand helped me place the structure in the real world. The same canbe said for studies. Looking at the results from differentperspectives can give you a truer picture of what they mean.

I believe there is a lot to learn from this example. One lessonis to always consider the basis for the information. A secondlesson is to look at what other information there is on the sametopic. And a third lesson might be to question whether the findingsare reflective of your own opinions. Did you participate in thesurvey? Regardless of whether you agree with the key findings, isyour voice among the responses? If you want accurate findings andmeaningful studies, you need to step up and participate.

While I'm more inclined to agree with the key findings from theReal Time/ACT/AUGIE surveys conducted over the years, the errantfindings from the PLGA Novarica study do have one true message thatmust be acknowledged: Not everyone is on the same page. Even if therespondents represent an uninformed minority, it still is anopportunity for the Real Time Campaign to reach a new audience.

Perhaps I'm just a “half glass full” kind of guy, which might bewhy I place little reliability on the almost daily political pollsbeing conducted. I do know one thing, however: Whoever ends upbeing our president next year, my voice will be among those whosevotes counted. Be sure yours are, too.