Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

> "It doesn't account for... what sort of issues the person was having on that day specifically"

I'm not clear on what you are suggesting here. Are you saying they should contact people multiple times to make sure they weren't having a bad day the first time around?

2-3 days is common because any longer than that and the survey results will no longer be reflective of a specific point in time.

Also, if you check their crosstabs they have breakdowns for gender and age.

When there's an election or census over some particular figure, there's no "+/-" or "standard deviation".

If the election count is say, 48% for A and 50% for B and 2% other, that's that. You don't have error bars, you don't have student-t tests, you don't have random varaibles, you don't have "confidence intervals". You assume you have the ground truth. You have a precise number assumed to be without error.

Its actually a fundamentally different kind of math than what is typically taught in statistic classes (standard error vs standard deviation. R-values, random variables, etc. etc.)

When it comes to "total population" style information gathering, the questions of reliability are about whether-or-not you in fact, grabbed the total population... and nothing really "mathematical" (such as what are my 95% confidence interval?)

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When people say 600,000 died of COVID19 in the USA, there's no error bar, standard deviation, or random variable on that number. It is what it is: the ground truth according to a particular source.

And when you have a 2nd source of information with slightly different numbers (ex: State databases vs US level databases), you have a non-mathematical problem for how to resolve the apparent contradiction.

There's no "metastudy" over other surveys. There's no "resample again", there's no reproducibility. These statistical concepts and tests simply do not apply. If you do in fact decide to conduct a 2nd census, you will find that the numbers will differ in practice (ex: recounting the same set of ballots a 2nd time). But there's no underlying mathematical model for why this happens, as is the case in typical population statistics (student t-test assumes a standard error over a standard deviation of a hypothetical sample, etc. etc.)

How do we compare to workers in other industries?

I would go as far as to say school is industrial daycare. Asserting that schools provide value to society because people learn things within their boundaries is, in my opinion, like saying that caffeine pills provide value to tired people by helping them stay awake. It's not wrong per se, but it's a hackneyed solution that doesn't address the root cause of the problem. "Our citizens are illiterate and don't understand mathematics? I know; let's kidnap their children and store those children in warehouses for 18 years while they learn morals and social values from each other instead of from productive adults."

The "foundational social concepts" children learn in school are taught to them by full-time teachers, who are only capable of repeating various myths about society that they themselves believe. The effective method to learn foundational social concepts is to live in and contribute to society, not to sit in a sterile, age-segregated social environment and listen to quarter-truths spoken by apathetic non-experts, and then be tested on arbitrary collections of unrelated fact.

I am not arguing against the concept of education in general, but the notion that it can be taught in school is, I think, one of the most damaging problems in society. You simply cannot learn quickly and efficiently as a numbered head in a sea of competitors; good, proper learning takes time, personal attention, discipline, and does not pace itself to a standardized schedule. I offer this essay, not as the foundation of my anti-school beliefs (which are supported by dozens of studies, hundreds of essays, and thousands of personal experiences), but as the same literary aperitif that allowed me to ask myself "what if school isn't good for society?"

https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html