Stat of the Week Competition Discussion: March 10-16 2012
If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!
Current Nominations:
Cam Slater nominates Stuff’s article “Perceptions clash with facts over abuse”:
“Her masters thesis at Massey University found about half of the children killed in New Zealand died at the hands of a Pakeha abuser.”
“Maori make up 14.6% of the population but kill and abuse their kids at the same rates and everyone else. The split is about 50/50. Her research clearly shows that child abuse most certainly is a cultural issue with Maori hugely more likely than everyone else to kill or abuse their children.”
I comment at: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/03/yes-it-is-a-cultural-issue/
David Farrar also comments on this: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/03/child_abuse_stats.html
The thesis says that the ethnicity of those convicted of assaulting children are Maori 48%, European 28%, PI 19%. To get a prevalence figure, I will use the population figures for under 14s. This is 21% Maori, 58% European, 11% PI and 9% Asian.
This works out to a prevalence rate for Maori that is 4.8 times that of Europeans. It is also 3.4 times that of Pacific Islanders. Or to compare all three, the comparative rates are Maori 4.8, PI 1.4, European 1.0.
This nomination and the references it links to seem confusing to me. Is the nomination for inappropriate use of stats in the original MA thesis? Inappropriate use of stats in the press release leading to the newspaper article (is it the MA thesis or something else which forms the research being commented on)? Or to what was written in the newspaper article by a journalist? Or to the analysis which appears in Kiwiblog? Or to the comments which follow the entry in Kiwiblog? Lots of players in the game.
Is anybody else worried when conviction rates are mixed up with the rates for an event happening? There are rather a lot of intervening variables between a crime being committed and a conviction in a court.
12 years ago
It is mainly the use of 50 percent were pakeha to say that there isn’t a cultural issue.
I would suggest that her MA thesis is flawed too…but that is just being used in the news article to suggest that Maori don;t kill their kids as much as previously though. But when you actually look at the stats the reverse is true.
12 years ago
Given that the story and the thesis come out and give the percentages, I read “not a cultural issue” as saying either:
– there is also a non-negligible amount of child abuse among Pakeha, ie, it’s not *just* happening in Maori, even though a substantial majority of newspaper reports are about Maori kids. This is like the ‘prevention paradox’ in public health — it’s important not just to focus on the high risk people, because a lot of disease happens in low-risk people too.
or
– the higher level of child abuse among Maori isn’t due to Maori thinking it’s ok, ie, it is more common among Maori, but it’s not a Maori cultural issue, it’s some other sort of problem. That is, the phrase ‘cultural issue’ is taken to actually mean something.
Either of these could have been the point she was trying to make, and either could be a reasonable point to make. The newspaper should have asked what was meant, and she should have explained.
In the UK, reported child abuse is much more common in poor communities, largely regardless of ethnicity, so a useful comparison might have standardised for some sort of neighbourhood socioeconomic index.
12 years ago
Maori are greatly over-represented at the rough end of many social and economic measures. Does that mean these are all “cultural issues”?
The problem doesn’t seem to be the statistics quoted in the article but that no-one defines what it means to be a cultural issue.
FWIW, the ethnicity of people convicted of assaulting children looks pretty similar to ethnicity of the prison population as a whole. In March 2011, the breakdown (from Corrections) for the prison population was 51% Maori, 34% European, 11% PI.
12 years ago
I see I should have refreshed before posting…
12 years ago
Thank you David Welch for digging out the stats on ethnicity of prison populations. My internet access evaporated for some hours and I wasn’t able to follow it up, although that was exactly what I was thinking. Just as internet failed I found a page in her original thesis which shows why conviction rates don’t give a really sound picture:
“Not all people charged with assault on a child are convicted of the crime. Figure 7.20 shows that in 2004, only 53% of alleged offenders were convicted, with the charges for 43% being withdrawn, dismissed, struck out or acquitted.” (p109)
In her graphic which goes with the text shows 3% discharged without conviction and 1% other. Just in case you wondered about the other 4%.
So an unknown number aren’t reported or charged, and of those charged we lose about half for who knows what reasons. Just some of the steps on the way from event to conviction…
The other issue I wonder about is that the data is about the ethnicity of the adult doing the assaulting, not the ethnicity of the child being assaulted. Given the various official definitions of “Maori” and the number of “mixed” families (whatever that means) there are even more issues which aren’t defined very well. And they aren’t likely to be available in official statistics. So it goes.
12 years ago