4 ms·

Not sure why we even have money to spend on these kinds of research. These trials are always random and inconclusive due to the nature of sample sizes.

taeric 10y ago
They are cheaper to do than the robust ones. At some level, these do provide data to look at. Right?
- perseusprime11 10y ago
  Ok. I will explain why these kinds of studies create more confusion. (Also, ask your nearest teacher if you want a different perspective) From Adam Grant's Raising a Moral Child: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-moral-child.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-... "A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give and share, the children were much more generous after their character had been praised than after their actions had been. Praising their character helped them internalize it as part of their identities. The children learned who they were from observing their own actions: I am a helpful person. This dovetails with new research led by the psychologist Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviors, nouns work better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them “to help,” it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them to “be a helper.” Cheating was cut in half when instead of, “Please don’t cheat,” participants were told, “Please don’t be a cheater.” When our actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices. Over time it can become part of us." If you are familiar with Carol Dweck’s work on praising action instead of intelligence, what does that tell you relative to Adam Grant? I respect both Adam Grant and Carol Dweck, but what do common people get from reading both their work that is well backed up by research? Confusion
  - rahimnathwani 10y ago
    Dweck's work is about praising correct/good actions, not action in general. She doesn't advocate praising effort that has zero/no chance of success. The key conclusion of her work is consistent with the passage you quoted. Instead of praising a child for trying in systematic ways, praise the child for being one of those 'organised' kids who tries in systematic ways rather than [insert ineffective way that kid could work hard with low likelihood of success]
  - taeric 10y ago
    I would think that is more problems from the reporting of these studies. There is certainly an argument that making the studies allows the shoddy reporting. However, my hope would be we could do both. Run as many cheap studies as we can. Just honestly report on the limited applicability. And keep adding to a corpus of data. Patterns may emerge.
anigbrowl 10y ago
You can't easily get money for a large study without some suggestive data from a small study. If you complain about the inconclusivity of research as a reason not to spend money on it, you're likely to keep getting worse or no research, at which point you'll be making policy on the basis of hunches rather than evidence.
matt4077 10y ago
The ultimate purpose is to improve education until no body ever again spews this bullshit again. The sample size here was 22,000. Is that enough? (the answer, by the way, is "It depends on the effect size you want to measure". I can do a study with n=2 that is pretty convincing. Question: "are these pills actually cyanide?". Study design: "I give one pill each to two healthy undergrads, after they tried to appear smart by saying 'correlation does not prove causation'". Observation: "The ethics board should definitely not have approved this!" Discussion: "Background death rate from non-violent causes for 22 year old males in the US is 0.01096/100000/day. Pill is poisonous with p<0.000000000000012")
- ourmandave 10y ago
  You're going to have a hell of a time getting participates to fill out follow up surveys for a long term analysis.
  - baldeagle 10y ago
    Get them to 'donate their body to science' and you can keep observing them forever, or until the cryo machines stop working.
- wjnc 10y ago
  Well the sample size should probably be mentioned as 22k / # students per class (~700 classes?), since the students results are purported to be correlated. The statistics is meagre as well. Regressing percentages, counts and dollars all non-normalised is bad form at the least. That said, I like the study. True random design takes guts and effort and gives data to be useful for years. We're still discussing RAND... On an important subject as well. Lot more to be found [1]. Thing that wonders me how state vs national differences are corrected for. On the one hand they shouldn't matter, since it is a random design. But the differences with national averages were huge. And far larger than the measured impact of the intervention. [1] https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/effects-kindergarten-classroom-earnings-united-states https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/effects-kinderga...

taeric 10y ago

They are cheaper to do than the robust ones. At some level, these do provide data to look at. Right?

perseusprime11 10y ago
Ok. I will explain why these kinds of studies create more confusion. (Also, ask your nearest teacher if you want a different perspective) From Adam Grant's Raising a Moral Child: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-moral-child.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-... "A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give and share, the children were much more generous after their character had been praised than after their actions had been. Praising their character helped them internalize it as part of their identities. The children learned who they were from observing their own actions: I am a helpful person. This dovetails with new research led by the psychologist Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviors, nouns work better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them “to help,” it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them to “be a helper.” Cheating was cut in half when instead of, “Please don’t cheat,” participants were told, “Please don’t be a cheater.” When our actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices. Over time it can become part of us." If you are familiar with Carol Dweck’s work on praising action instead of intelligence, what does that tell you relative to Adam Grant? I respect both Adam Grant and Carol Dweck, but what do common people get from reading both their work that is well backed up by research? Confusion
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  Dweck's work is about praising correct/good actions, not action in general. She doesn't advocate praising effort that has zero/no chance of success. The key conclusion of her work is consistent with the passage you quoted. Instead of praising a child for trying in systematic ways, praise the child for being one of those 'organised' kids who tries in systematic ways rather than [insert ineffective way that kid could work hard with low likelihood of success]
- taeric 10y ago
  I would think that is more problems from the reporting of these studies. There is certainly an argument that making the studies allows the shoddy reporting. However, my hope would be we could do both. Run as many cheap studies as we can. Just honestly report on the limited applicability. And keep adding to a corpus of data. Patterns may emerge.

anigbrowl 10y ago

You can't easily get money for a large study without some suggestive data from a small study. If you complain about the inconclusivity of research as a reason not to spend money on it, you're likely to keep getting worse or no research, at which point you'll be making policy on the basis of hunches rather than evidence.

matt4077 10y ago

The ultimate purpose is to improve education until no body ever again spews this bullshit again. The sample size here was 22,000. Is that enough? (the answer, by the way, is "It depends on the effect size you want to measure". I can do a study with n=2 that is pretty convincing. Question: "are these pills actually cyanide?". Study design: "I give one pill each to two healthy undergrads, after they tried to appear smart by saying 'correlation does not prove causation'". Observation: "The ethics board should definitely not have approved this!" Discussion: "Background death rate from non-violent causes for 22 year old males in the US is 0.01096/100000/day. Pill is poisonous with p<0.000000000000012")

ourmandave 10y ago
You're going to have a hell of a time getting participates to fill out follow up surveys for a long term analysis.
- baldeagle 10y ago
  Get them to 'donate their body to science' and you can keep observing them forever, or until the cryo machines stop working.
wjnc 10y ago
Well the sample size should probably be mentioned as 22k / # students per class (~700 classes?), since the students results are purported to be correlated. The statistics is meagre as well. Regressing percentages, counts and dollars all non-normalised is bad form at the least. That said, I like the study. True random design takes guts and effort and gives data to be useful for years. We're still discussing RAND... On an important subject as well. Lot more to be found [1]. Thing that wonders me how state vs national differences are corrected for. On the one hand they shouldn't matter, since it is a random design. But the differences with national averages were huge. And far larger than the measured impact of the intervention. [1] https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/effects-kindergarten-classroom-earnings-united-states https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/effects-kinderga...