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July 13, 2005
Home alone data debatable
The article I choose was from the July 10, 2005 issue of the St. Paul Pioneer Press
The article is about a recent study launched by Univerity of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks researching the number of children in Minnesota that are home alone after school. The article says that the study did not use scientific research to back up the statistics they give.
One such example of a statistic that is not backed up by research is that the study says, "Minnesota is home to 950,000 young people and has the highest percentage in the country of children ages 12 and older alone at home every single afternoon." When confronted about the statement, Dale Blyth, the commission's chief of staff says, "We do not know which state has the largest number of teens home alone nor the percentage of Minnesota teens specifically," and calls it an "unfortunate over-interpretation."
I choose this article because it tied into a previous article I choose about unethical research practices. This deffinately an example of an unethical research practice. By releasing this study the commission takes away from the real issue. Children being home alone is deffinately a problem, even if the numbers are not as high as reported in the study. However, it is now going to be harder to address the issue because any future studies may not be believed.
Comments
It is pretty easy to make statistics look better or worse than they really are. In this case they took a sample and tried to infer it to a population. When one does this your results can change by many factors such as sample size and sample selection. I am not defending the researchers I am just saying that if they wanted to make their results look a certain way they could.
Posted by: Chuck at July 15, 2005 10:53 AM