[Air-L] NYT story on academic facebook research

[Sam Ladner]

Ah this is all true. Back when I was in journalism school, I remember a
single class we had on "numbers." We were tasked with using calculators to
decipher the "validity" of fake press releases.

Statistical significance? No sir, we did not study that! Probably because
our journalism professors and future editors don't understand statistics. We
did do "interviewing," which I must say, was much much better training than
any interview methods I learned in graduate school.

Upon my entry into graduate school, I recall being shocked at how common
qualitative research was. I had thought it inferior because it didn't have
statistical significance (I had done my own studying beyond the proscribed
journalism curriculum). I wondered how all these academics get off on saying
they do "valid" research when they  had sample sizes as small as 10!
Imagine!

Of course it took me awhile, but I learned how qualitative validity works.
Most people, journalists or not, have no idea how qualitative validity
works, and have only a passing understanding of quantitative validity
(something vaguely to do with "sample size" they imagine).




On Dec 17, 2007 3:32 PM, Mary-Helen Ward <mhward at usyd.edu.au> wrote:

> Fair enough!
>
> However, I, and other qualitative researchers I meet with at the
> University,
> have observed over some time that (at least in Australia) journalists find
> it easier to ignore or poke fun at qualitative research than at
> statistically-based material. If there are what they consider 'figures' to
> hang a story on they seem much more comfortable even if they don't
> interpret
> them well. Interesting, they don't seem to see their own backgrounders and
> feature articles in which they canvass opinion, mash it up and report it,
> often really well, as qualitative research.
>
> M-H
>
> On 18/12/07 1:04 AM, "Eszter Hargittai" <info at webuse.org> wrote:
>
> > Mary-Helen mentioned earlier that journalists seem to feel more
> comfortable
> > discussing quantitative results.  That comment made me chuckle.  If you
> only
> > knew how much time I (and I suspect others in similar shoes) spend
> > explaining relatively simple statistical findings to journalists only to
> > have the results misrepresented in the end you would not make that
> > assumption.  I suspect it's just another case where that comment about
> > journalists' coverage of other areas applies: if it's not your specialty
> > you're more likely to think they cover it well.:-}
> >
>
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