This recent story from msnbc.com reports that "nearly 60 percent of teens text while driving." From the story: An anonymous national survey conducted last year found that 58 percent of high school seniors said they had texted or emailed while driving during the previous month. About 43 percent of high school juniors acknowledged they did …
Continue reading More than half of US teens text while driving…
[Ahem....some of Arieli's data from studies on honesty has come under suspicion for being faked. And one of the studies here, on the Ten Commandments, has not replicated. You can read about this here] Dan Arieli, a behavioral economist at Duke University, has publshed a book for popular audiences called, The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty. …
The causal headlines are bearing some great news-- "How Dessert for Breakfast Can Help You Lose Weight" or "Dessert at breakfast may help dieters." The press is buzzing about a recent study from Tel Aviv University. Here's the abstract from the journal article. The researchers randomly assigned people to one of two low-calorie diets. Women …
Continue reading Can you eat dessert at breakfast to lose weight?
In the journal-to-journalism cycle, the details of a study can get distorted on their way to the web. Here are three different takes on a recent article published by Canadian researchers. The study had apparently investigated links between spanking and child outcomes. Notice that the headlines in each study make different claims and focus on …
Continue reading Three different takes on a single journal article
A report suggests that among Americans, the average number of close friends people report having is just two. You can read an msnbc report of the study here. The study reports that the researchers ...surveyed more than 2,000 adults ages 18 and older from the nationally representative Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) program. …
This story reports that pregnant women are less likely to go into spontaneous labor on a negatively toned holiday (Halloween). Similarly, they are more likely to do so on a positively toned holiday (Valentine's Day). Here's a quote from the New York Times story: In a study published this month, however, researchers at the Yale …
A journalist's headline has reported, "Folic acid tied to better toddler talk". a. What kind of claim is this? Frequency, association, or cause? Here is a summary of the main finding: Women who took folic acid supplements in the first two months of pregnancy were less likely to have kids with severe language delays in …
Continue reading Prenatal folic acid and child speech development
Recently, two political scientists wrote an essay in the New York Times explaining some polling data they had collected on the Tea Party political group in the United States. Here's one of the claims in their article: "Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 …
CNN published an article with this headline: Study: Facebook helps your self-esteem Before you read the article, consider: 1. What kind of claim is the headline of this article making? Causal? Association? Or Frequency? 2. What are the variables in the headline’s claim—what two variables will you expect to read about in the article? …