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I wonder what the author means when he says the CDC did not report their results? In the final paragraph he says, "Regardless of how the decision was made, it w

I wonder what the author means when he says the CDC did not report their results? In the final paragraph he says, "Regardless of how the decision was made, it was a disservice to the American people, who paid for the survey and the information it yielded, but who were not allowed to see it and judge its worth for themselves." Indeed, it's wrong for government agencies to suppress publicly funded data sets, especially when suppression is due to political affiliations. But then how did the author obtain the data?

burfog 8y ago
The FOIA would be the obvious path to this data. You can get all sorts of government data that way. Often the biggest trouble is knowing that the information exists. If you don't know it exists, you can't ask for it.
- markisus 8y ago
  I was able to find this page through Google search: https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavioral-Risk-Factor-Surveillance-System-BRFSS-H/iuq5-y9ct/data https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavior... and I found the survey question by searching with the filter Question > contains > "firearm." At this point I'm tempted to say that the author's complaints with respect to data suppression are exaggerated.
  - glenra 8y ago
    Kleck's complaint is that when the data was originally collected two decades ago, CDC researchers could have calculated an estimated number of DGUs from the raw data and reported summary statistics relating to it, but didn't do so. They did do public estimates for other categories, just not this one. Kleck thinks they didn't release any analysis of this data because they didn't like the conclusion. (Which seems plausible but would be a hard thing to prove) Kleck wrote this report once he realized the raw unanalyzed response data (which is what you found) had at some point become available at the CDC site so he could do his own analysis. >I was able to find this page through Google search You didn't need to - Kleck's data source is the very first item in the "References" section of OP. It was: > Centers for Disease Control (CDC). 2018. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System website at https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm. Accessed 2-14-18.
glenra 8y ago
By "reporting their results" he means "publish a report which contains their estimate of the number of DGUs in the US". And preferably do so in a timely manner, like in the 1990s or 2000s. That never happened. They did eventually make this older raw survey data available - that was the source of this paper - but that's not nearly the same thing as saying "here is the official CDC estimate for how many DGUs there are annually in the US...which just happens to closely match Kleck's estimates" back when people were arguing about it.

burfog 8y ago

The FOIA would be the obvious path to this data. You can get all sorts of government data that way. Often the biggest trouble is knowing that the information exists. If you don't know it exists, you can't ask for it.

markisus 8y ago
I was able to find this page through Google search: https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavioral-Risk-Factor-Surveillance-System-BRFSS-H/iuq5-y9ct/data https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavior... and I found the survey question by searching with the filter Question > contains > "firearm." At this point I'm tempted to say that the author's complaints with respect to data suppression are exaggerated.
- glenra 8y ago
  Kleck's complaint is that when the data was originally collected two decades ago, CDC researchers could have calculated an estimated number of DGUs from the raw data and reported summary statistics relating to it, but didn't do so. They did do public estimates for other categories, just not this one. Kleck thinks they didn't release any analysis of this data because they didn't like the conclusion. (Which seems plausible but would be a hard thing to prove) Kleck wrote this report once he realized the raw unanalyzed response data (which is what you found) had at some point become available at the CDC site so he could do his own analysis. >I was able to find this page through Google search You didn't need to - Kleck's data source is the very first item in the "References" section of OP. It was: > Centers for Disease Control (CDC). 2018. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System website at https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm. Accessed 2-14-18.

glenra 8y ago

By "reporting their results" he means "publish a report which contains their estimate of the number of DGUs in the US". And preferably do so in a timely manner, like in the 1990s or 2000s. That never happened. They did eventually make this older raw survey data available - that was the source of this paper - but that's not nearly the same thing as saying "here is the official CDC estimate for how many DGUs there are annually in the US...which just happens to closely match Kleck's estimates" back when people were arguing about it.