Research provenance (just link, already)
The Herald has a story about high rates of depression in young Australian men, which gives very little information about what the data was like and where it came from. Often that’s a sign that the people who came up with the numbers would really prefer you not know how they did it.
In this case, though, the research is from a well-designed survey with computer-based interviewing of people chosen by dialling random telephone numbers, and there’s a detailed description of the research program and a glossy but carefully-written and informative report (PDF) available.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »