They certainly can, though the proper term is bias. In that respect, something I find particularly egregious is ARI’s use of loaded terminology in it’s articles describing the ‘issues’ it’s ostensibly doing surveys on (“Culture wars”, “Canadians not convinced”, etc.). These are the first thing users see when they navigate to the website which almost certainly influences their opinions before they even start the survey. Even if the survey is emailed to them, some of them will likely navigate to their site anyway to brush up on facts.
Another potential issue (though this is present in all psychology/sociology research; majority of psych papers are done on university students), is that their sample population is only people that have taken the time to register in their forum. Even though they’re ostensibly paid for it, there aren’t many people that will do that, or even think of it and given how some of their articles are titled I can get a fairly clear picture of the kind of person that would want to make an account on that website.
Lastly, I’m not a psych major, but when a paper’s methodology section basically amounts to “We surveyed random users on our website at this date” and nothing else of substance, I tend to not take it seriously.
Not surprised a newspaper picked it up though. A really good clicky headline, and they didn’t even have to think it up.