Survey, observational, and qualitative research can all support carmakers' decisions about how to design a dashboard. Photo: insta_photos/Shutterstock Here's a story about automobile dashboards! After leaning in to designing cars with touchscreen dashboard controls, automakers seem to be heading back to basic buttons. This summary, from the website PopSci.com, discusses the variety of research that …
Continue reading Touchscreens, buttons, and dials: What’s best for drivers?
Given the study's results, predict which of these chimps is most likely to pee after another one does. Photo: Dirk M. de Boer/Shutterstock The radio program Short Wave (on NPR) highlights 3 science-related news stories every week. In this episode, one story is about a study showing that peeing is contagious in chimpanzees. The study …
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 …
According to the report, the Court may have been misled by the quality and true findings of survey on the habits of gun owners. Photo: B Christopher/Alamy Stock Photo Polling research can play a critical role in shaping public opinion and public policy, so it's crucial that it be conducted well. Polling (survey) research is …
Continue reading When questionable survey methods reach the Supreme Court
The journalist's uncritical acceptance of this frequency claim's data is also awkward. Photo credit:JRP Studio/Shutterstock Here's an interesting set of frequency claims about what percentage of U.S. adults feel awkward. The data were presented at the content farm StudyFinds, under the headline, "That's awkward! 68% still often feel as insecure as they did as teens" …
Does the methodology of this survey allow us to generalize the result to all U.S. Latino adults? Photo credit: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock It's been awhile since we've interrogated a frequency claim. Pew Research has some new data about U.S. Latinos' experience with speaking Spanish. Pew's synopsis is here. There's a lot of fascinating content and …
Continue reading Latinos’ experiences with the Spanish language
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. …
Continue reading What behaviors make you popular? What behaviors make you likable?
How long will your survey take? Photo: MarutStudio/Shutterstock Here's a post for producers of research (especially students who are designing their own surveys). I'm a fan of the Pew Research Center's polling website, in part because they are transparent about their methods, and in part because they share educational content about how to do good …
Continue reading Producer focus: Estimating how long your survey will take
Based on how many UD articles these students are wearing, can you predict whether their team won or lost last weekend? Christopher Ginn/University of Delaware Here's a newspaper feature on how people's moods and self-esteem fluctuate with the performance of their favorite sports teams. A variety of studies were covered by a journalist for the …
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 …
Continue reading Personality correlates of liking spicy foods