Editors Blog

RT@RobMoss 100% of PT writers claim Twitter full of bird droppings... only joking :-) Never let the truth get in the way of a good twit. Great to see Twitter held accountable with rigorous investigation.

All the best from Brighton,
Mark
http://integrationtraining.blogspot.com/

Hi Rob

Thanks for highlighting this piece.
Was it a lie - or was it drawing people to focus to one piece of data?

The information I included was factual. The 'spin' that was put on was to get readers to look at the research - and it did just that.... helped by your publicity ;)

Ask a question in isolation and you get the result you expect - and quite rightly I agree it would show that integrity is important - equally it shows that if a poll is done and you give limited choice then something drops to the bottom of the pile - in the case of the CIPD poll it was integrity (amenest other factors).

Twitter is full of 'factoids' and it is the professionals job to look at what is communicated and draw their own conclusions. Indeed much like the polls held by CIPD and Personnel Today - conclusions are drawn on the basis of 1-200 HR managers. The reality is that the majority of people in the UK are employed in firms that do not have an HR function - they are employed in firms that employ less than 50 people. Are these lies too?

How you can say "Many, many people retweeted" when in fact 5 did ( http://search.twitter.com/search?q=83%25+HR+integrity ) If 5 makes a tweetathon then what do you call it when there are 100s of retweets?

Indeed if you look at the tweets the blog captured you will see that more people retweeted the posts:
14% of HR people think leadership
17% of HR pros feel meeting goals is important
than the one you list - so its all down to selective reporting ;)

The blog article that the post linked to had a summary of the report findings and a link to the original research.

FYI the tweets were also an interesting piece of market research as to what 'headlines' work and which ones don't - its interesting that you picked up on the negative spin headline rather then the positive spin one..

Alright Mike, fair point, "lie" was heavy-handed, I don't think you were trying to deceive. Hence, the headline now reads "misinformation".

However I stand by my assertion that the tweeted spin "83% of HR do not think integrity is important..." is not factual.

The CIPD asked its members to "choose three competencies they believed were most important to establishing the function’s effectiveness and credibility in the organisation."

83% felt it was a less important competency than three of the 12 other choices availbale to it.

If they were allowed more choices what would the result have been?

You make the point that it was only five tweets, but actually you had 17 retweets according to your post, albeit using different factoids including:

• "#CIPD research shows that only 17% of HR people think meeting objectives is important in tough times". (I'd dispute this, the research showed only that 17% found it one of the most important, as in the top three of 13)
• "#CIPD research shows only 14% of HR think leadership important in tough economic times". (No, , the research showed only that 14% found it one of the most important)

So, yes, it was selective reporting, and yes I went for the most negative one, but only because I selected the most blatant example. The other examples above are not much better ;)

You could have only drawn the conclusions you have drawn from the research - conclusions I note that the CIPD did not draw at the time - if the poll had allowed voters to select as many of the 13 competencies as they had liked.

Again I'd hazard a guess you'd get 98.87% believing integrity, meeting goals and leadership were important, but then how useful a survey would that have been? Surely it was a survey of priorities for HR in a recession, not a survey of what's important vs unimportant?

Yes, Personnel Today carries small surveys but we rarely draw attention to low-sample size surveys and if we do we're explicit about it: we're clear that it's a poll of "PT.com users" or "PT readers"; we don't spin the results; we're careful to use the language used in the questions accurately in any report we run; and finally if we tweet it we kick it off accurately. I would suggest that the CIPD adheres to similar principles.

One final point, is "integrity" really a competency at all?

all the best
Rob :)

Are ANY of the points competencies - well that is a different debate....

Twi**er is akin to a headline, rather than a blog post or article and if individuals only rely on the headline - which I suspect some do, then more fool them.

The piece was based on a membership POLL not research, however my point was about the importance of question formulation rather than the output of the poll itself - it was a blog reflection not an article on the poll results - a reflection on my thinking.

With accessibility (much like blogging) comes more content as professionals we need to treat all 'headlines' like a "thats interesting - what does it mean" rather than OMG is that true....

Just be careful of the stats you use in headlines in future... ;)
Mike