Vigilance
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. -- Wendell Phillips
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NEWS
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Reason to Censor TV Even More
This study came out earlier this year but is right now getting a wave of attention around the Internet, especially on the right-leaning sites. A researcher at RAND did two studies that conclude that, well, as the RAND site puts it:
A sample of 1,762 teenagers were interviewed about their sexual experiences and what TV they watched, and then a year later they were asked again. The paper is available in PDF form online: HERE
When you study inferential statistics, the very first rule you learn is: Correlation does not prove causation. This RAND study could have been written by a textbook author seeking an example to demonstrate the point.
This study, as it is described in this RAND report, simply does not show what the authors say it shows.
Let's say you have two measures on a sample. You see at Time 1 that some respondents watch sexier TV than others, and you grade them on that. Then, at Time 2 you find that some of the teenagers have had, uh, some degree of sexual activity, and you grade them on that. Raise your hand if you're surprised that the kids who watched sexier TV at Time 1 acquired more sexual experience by Time 2.
The full explanation about correlation and causation is that the two correlated variables (in this case, sex-on-TV and sexual behavior) might have the hypothesized causal relationship, or as is often said A might cause B (TV-watching might cause sex), they may have the opposite causal direction, e.g., desire for sexual experience causes interest in sexy TV, or there may be a third variable at work (C causes both A and B), for instance, there might be personality factors, environmental factors, even physiological factors that cause a kid to be curious about both sex on television and sex in real life.
But these authors entertain only one possibility: that TV watching causes kids to go out and have sex:
I can just imagine what the moralists will do when they get hold of this one. America, already the most prudish country in the Western world, is still too libertine for some people. Most people are just not in the position to evaluate this kind of research -- how would they know? Why wouldn't they take these morsels of jargony-sounding stuff as real science? When fake-science "proves" what people hope is true, it's very, very hard to argue against it.
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Exposure to TV Sex May Hasten the Initiation of Sexual Activity Among Teens Does Watching Sex on Television Influence Teens’ Sexual Activity?
A sample of 1,762 teenagers were interviewed about their sexual experiences and what TV they watched, and then a year later they were asked again. The paper is available in PDF form online: HERE
When you study inferential statistics, the very first rule you learn is: Correlation does not prove causation. This RAND study could have been written by a textbook author seeking an example to demonstrate the point.
This study, as it is described in this RAND report, simply does not show what the authors say it shows.
Let's say you have two measures on a sample. You see at Time 1 that some respondents watch sexier TV than others, and you grade them on that. Then, at Time 2 you find that some of the teenagers have had, uh, some degree of sexual activity, and you grade them on that. Raise your hand if you're surprised that the kids who watched sexier TV at Time 1 acquired more sexual experience by Time 2.
The full explanation about correlation and causation is that the two correlated variables (in this case, sex-on-TV and sexual behavior) might have the hypothesized causal relationship, or as is often said A might cause B (TV-watching might cause sex), they may have the opposite causal direction, e.g., desire for sexual experience causes interest in sexy TV, or there may be a third variable at work (C causes both A and B), for instance, there might be personality factors, environmental factors, even physiological factors that cause a kid to be curious about both sex on television and sex in real life.
But these authors entertain only one possibility: that TV watching causes kids to go out and have sex:
Reducing the amount of sexual talk and behavior on television, or the amount of time that adolescents are exposed to them, could appreciably delay the onset of sexual activity.
I can just imagine what the moralists will do when they get hold of this one. America, already the most prudish country in the Western world, is still too libertine for some people. Most people are just not in the position to evaluate this kind of research -- how would they know? Why wouldn't they take these morsels of jargony-sounding stuff as real science? When fake-science "proves" what people hope is true, it's very, very hard to argue against it.
