3 ms·

Sample size is pretty big: > they recruited 2,400 people to join four custom-made social networks

• olliej 8y ago
  2400 people is not a lot, especially for a claim like this. Also there was a similarly sized study a few weeks ago, and basically all participants were students or faculty at 2 different universities. If you are going to make a claim like this, you need to have a very large and very significant measurable effect, and the smaller your sample size the larger the effect needs to be to have any confidence of the correctness of the study. Again, to be on HN the paper itself, and the source data, should be freely available. By allowing them to be on HN as they are we are essentially allowing unchecked press releases that always over state the validity of claims.
  • Nadya 8y ago
    >2400 people is not a lot, especially for a claim like this. For a population size of 350,000,000 people the required sample size for a 95% confidence level within a 2% margin of error is 2,401 people. Assuming these 2,401 people were selected properly then that is just about enough, even for a claim like this.
    • mamon 8y ago
      To be „chosen properly” means that the sample must have similar age, racial, educational, gender structure as the 350M society it is supposed to represent. Recruiting 2401 college students as the only sample automatically makes any study unscientific bullshit. Also, if you ask me, 95% confidence with 2% error margin is pretty low bar.
  • sincerely 8y ago
    >basically all participants were students or faculty at 2 different universities. welcome to psychology studies
    • bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
      https://psychcentral.com/blog/psychology-secrets-most-psychology-studies-are-college-student-biased/ https://psychcentral.com/blog/psychology-secrets-most-psycho...