Survey bias can be perpetrated by phrasing the poll questions in a manner that can significantly influence, guide, and determine the answers provided by poll respondents.
Leading or loaded questions steer poll respondents toward prerequired or predetermined answers.
Yesterday I posted a summary of a Human Rights Commission (HRC) poll and I was very sceptical of the poll results published.
Was it an accurate poll, was it a true reflection of the respondents feelings or were the questions “loaded” to deliver the right results?
I said I “…would love to have a look at the “questions” in this “poll”
Well done to the HRC (that is and will be the first and last time I say that!) because the poll questions and full breakdown of the demographics of the respondents to each question was published on their website.
Not being a user of AI I asked a friend to run the questions through Chatgpt and request it to identify at least six leading or loaded questions.
Here is the response from Chatgpt –
1. The entire pre-survey briefing text
“Historians and experts, both Māori and non-Māori, say that all parties involved… intended us to move forward together…”
“The Treaty / Te Tiriti also assured the majority Māori population that their way of life would continue…”
Why it’s loaded
This is not neutral context — it is normative framing.
Respondents are primed with:
Was it an accurate poll, was it a true reflection of the respondents feelings or were the questions “loaded” to deliver the right results?
I said I “…would love to have a look at the “questions” in this “poll”
Well done to the HRC (that is and will be the first and last time I say that!) because the poll questions and full breakdown of the demographics of the respondents to each question was published on their website.
Not being a user of AI I asked a friend to run the questions through Chatgpt and request it to identify at least six leading or loaded questions.
Here is the response from Chatgpt –
1. The entire pre-survey briefing text
“Historians and experts, both Māori and non-Māori, say that all parties involved… intended us to move forward together…”
“The Treaty / Te Tiriti also assured the majority Māori population that their way of life would continue…”
Why it’s loaded
This is not neutral context — it is normative framing.
Respondents are primed with:
Expert authority (“historians and experts say…”)
Moral cues (assurance, protection, peaceful settlement)
A single interpretive narrative presented as settled fact
Best practice would separate information from interpretation, or explicitly flag that these are contested views.
Effect: pushes respondents toward agreement before they answer anything.
2. “The tino rangatiratanga that was guaranteed to Māori in Te Tiriti aligns closely with the human right to self-determination.”
Why it’s loaded
It embeds three contested claims as givens:
* That tino rangatiratanga was “guaranteed”
* That its meaning is settled
* That it aligns closely with modern UN self-determination doctrine
The respondent is not being asked whether this alignment exists — only whether they are “aware” of it.
Effect: converts an interpretation into a presumed fact, then measures awareness of that presumption.
3. “The Waitangi Tribunal has made an expert finding that Māori did not give up their sovereignty when they signed Te Tiriti in 1840.”
Why it’s loaded
Uses appeal to authority (“expert finding”) rather than neutral description.
Frames the Tribunal’s view as the expert conclusion, not an interpretation.
No acknowledgement that:
* The Tribunal is not a court
* Its findings are debated
*Sovereignty is a legally complex and disputed concept
Effect: discourages disagreement by positioning dissent as rejecting “expert findings.”
4. “Current checks and balances on Government power do not stop Parliament from passing laws that breach human rights and/or the Treaty / Te Tiriti.”
Why it’s loaded
Negatively framed and assertive, not interrogative.
Conflates:
* Human rights breaches
* Treaty breaches
* Parliamentary sovereignty
Respondents are not offered a neutral alternative such as:
* “Are sufficient / insufficient / unsure”
Effect: nudges respondents toward perceiving institutional failure as established fact.
5. “Harmonious race relations through honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi / the Treaty of Waitangi.”
Why it’s loaded
This is a classic value-stacking question:
* “Harmonious”
* “Race relations”
* “Honouring”
It assumes a causal link: that honouring the Treaty produces harmony.
There is no option to agree with harmony without the Treaty mechanism.
Effect: disagreement sounds like opposition to harmony itself, not the mechanism.
6. “As the parties to the Treaty / Te Tiriti agreement, Māori and the Crown (Government) deciding together on an equal footing, how it is honoured.”
Why it’s loaded
Assumes:
* Māori today are a single coherent decision-making party
* “Equal footing” is unproblematic and agreed
* Joint decision-making is the natural or legitimate default
Does not test whether respondents agree with those premises.
Effect: frames co-governance as a given, not a proposal.
A meta-issue worth flagging
Almost no genuinely adversarial or symmetry-testing questions
There are no mirror questions such as:
* “The Treaty should apply equally to all citizens regardless of ancestry”
* “Treaty interpretations should be settled by Parliament or courts, not advisory bodies”
This skews the response distribution before analysis begins.
Short summary
The poll repeatedly embeds contested interpretations as background facts, stacks moral language into value questions, relies heavily on authority framing, and avoids symmetry-testing. That doesn’t make the results meaningless — but it does mean they reflect responses to a guided narrative, not neutral opinion sampling.
“…does mean they reflect responses to a guided narrative, not neutral opinion sampling.”
---------------------
That is a pretty sad indictment on the Human Rights Commission! But, in truth, who would be surprised?
What do you think, A Biased Survey or Survey bias?
The Human Rights Commission makes no attempt to hide its support of the Maori Sovereignty movement.
This is what the Commission posted on its website when jubilantly announcing the appointment of Professor Claire Charters, co author of He Puapua –
“Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission has appointed Professor Claire Charters to the Commission as Rongomau Taketake to lead work on Indigenous Peoples’ rights.”
“We’re delighted to have Claire Charters join us. She brings internationally recognised expertise on Indigenous Peoples’ rights which will greatly benefit the Commission’s work with iwi, hapū, policy makers, and the wider public.”
“The Commission has partnered with the National Iwi Chairs Forum to bolster its indigenous leadership, including the appointment of Professor Charters.”
“We are grateful to the National Iwi Chairs Forum, and Claire Charters, for this joint initiative,” says the Chief Commissioner.
“The Forum’s selection, and our appointment, of Claire Charters is another step towards the Commission respecting and implementing te Tiriti o Waitangi,”
National Iwi Chairs Forum Pou Tikanga Professor Margaret Mutu “hopes it’s a model the whole public sector can learn from.”
Pee Kay writes he is from a generation where common sense, standards, integrity and honesty are fundamental attributes. This article was first published HERE
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