Despite other comments that are somewhat aghast at the idea of dictating a margin of error, the threshold at which you consider something significant IS arbitrary. The 'p' value of 0.05, the inverse of the '95%'confidence interval, is commonly chosen by researchers but is by no means the only choice you could make. Some research uses less stringent or more stringent thresholds, depending on the nature of the research and the assumptions of the researchers.

What do you mean by "dictate" or now"? Every survey always states the margin of error like that. Its a function of the sample size and introductory stats to get that number.

I somehow doubt that they actually randomly sampled from a representative population. It's more likely that they use an online audience who likes to fill out review forms.

So now you have a different complaint, without even addressing my questions?

It's good to be truly skeptical, but to be completely contrary is a mental trap.

I guess things went wrong with my sarcastic remark on being able to "dictate" the margin of error.

With respect to statistics and online surveys, I'm not even skeptical but outright cynical. Calculating the margin of error with a standard deviation only works for representative samples, which reviews.org most likely is not able to provide. Adding these percentages and terms to the report gives a false sense of reliability, which annoys me.

Still, I should probably not have resorted to sarcasm. My apologies for that.

These error margins are derived mathematically from the population and results. They assume a representative sample.

Yes. There are calculators for the required sample size, relative to population, to achieve a specific MOE