September 7, 2012
Natural division of labour
From one of the current clicky polls over on Stuff, some surprising results:
In a representative sample of NZ parents I would have thought the ‘Yes’ figure would have to be at most 50%.
The question is an example of where the passive voice can be an improvement: “Were your children breastfed?”
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 »
Ha ha, very true. I guess the mere males answering the clicky poll are showing solidarity with their partners as a “team”. Using the passive voice still allows the two partners to double count their vote, of course.
Even if you were able to remove the double counting, the “yes” figure is likely to be an over-representation of the true situation. Children are seldom either strictly breastfed or not-breastfed. Most mothers attempt to breastfeed, with a variety of success, and at some point the process will work out, or it doesn’t. And of course there are a number of reasons why this could have been the case. So when faced with a question like this, mothers who have tried to breastfeed tend to answer “yes”, even if they were unable to breastfeed for an extended period.
To be meaningful, the question probably ought to have had a minimum time period, and clinicians probably argue at length over how long that might be.
But of course, no such tweaking will make clicky “Stuff” polls believeable.
I look forward to Stuff’s surprising statistic featuring in an upcoming episode of “Close-up” on TV One real soon…
12 years ago