The story reported that members of the clergy are most likely to score high on all four questions. Photo: Diego Cervo/Shutterstock Before you read on, make a prediction: Which U.S. jobs would you predict would be the most fulfilling? In this story from the Washington Post column,"Department of Data" you can explore some fascinating data …
Category: Chapter 05; Identifying Good Measurement
Burrito bowl variability
But how big will the next burrito bowl be? Generic burrito bowl photo: B Young/Shutterstock An important concept in both statistics and methods is variability. And this analysis conducted by Wells Fargo consultants does a nice job illustrating the concept of variability. They'd been seeing social media complaints about a popular restaurant chain wasn't always …
What behaviors make you popular? What behaviors make you likable?
The study investigated two types of behaviors and two types of liking. Photo credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock Can psychological science make you more popular? That's what a journalist from Forbes claims in an article, "A science-backed way to up your popularity and friendship." Let's see what the journalist is claiming and see if we buy the evidence. …
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Personality correlates of liking spicy foods
Photo credit: marcoscastillo/Deposit photos Here's another article from the content farm website, StudyFinds. This one's on the personality correlates of liking spicy foods, and it includes a combination of frequency and association claims. The same poll was also covered by the NYPost and by Yahoo! News (with a video) Below I will post a series of …
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Taking Poli Sci predicts likelihood of voting
After matching students based on their pre-college voting behaviors, the researchers found that students who had taken a political science class became more likely to register to vote. Photo credit: Lakshmiprasad/Depositphotos In the online news outlet called The Conversation, researchers write summaries of their own research studies for a general audience. Here's an example from …
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Kids who eat more fruits, vegetables have better mental health
Which alternative explanations for the relationship between diet and mental health does this study allow us to rule out? Photo credit: ArturVerkhovetskiy/Deposit Photos Here's a simple headline to work with: "Kids who eat more fruits, vegetables have better mental health". The story appears on a mega-site called studyfinds.org, which provides multiple summaries of science research. …
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People believe claims of sexual harassment more when women are attractive
The coded stereotypicality of the drawing was a dependent variable in one of the studies. Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Jin Goh. Citation: Goh, J. X., Bandt-Law, B., Cheek, N. N., Sinclair, S., & Kaiser, C. R. (2021). Narrow prototypes and neglected victims: Understanding perceptions of sexual harassment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online …
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Frequency claims: Fitter and better rested during lockdown
One of the positive changes people reported was being able to spend more time with family. Photo: Steve Skjold / Alamy Stock Photo The first peer-reviewed studies about the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to appear in journals, and journalists are starting to summarize them in the popular press. Let's explore this summary of a survey …
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Teaching with 100 Humans
In 2020, Netflix released an 8-episode series called "100 Humans" in which 100 (American) humans from a variety of ages and social groups participate in a series of studies. It's a gold mine of examples for critical thinking in research methods. You'll find examples of posttest-only, pretest-posttest designs, HARKing, ethics, and more. Most of the …
Temperature data as quasi-experiment
Which government-led social distancing measures are effective at stopping the spread of the novel Coronovirus? One company has contributed data to answering this question. A private health technology company, Kinsa sells a "smart thermometer" which links to an app that guides people through what to do if they have a fever. When people use the …