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> The target population of our study are all current social science students at GoetheUniversity of Frankfurt > Participation was voluntary and incentivized wi

by thayne 5y ago

> The target population of our study are all current social science students at GoetheUniversity of Frankfurt > Participation was voluntary and incentivized with a lottery of three Amazon gift vouchers to the value of 50 euro each. > However, the actual net response rate dropped from 14% to 7.5% when we consider only those who completed at least80% of the survey (n= 501), which is clearly poor and has to be kept in mind whendrawing conclusions from the data. Not really a great sample. All participants are from a rather specific demographic, and a small sample size at that.

akudha 5y ago
I have a request - can we add the sample size to studies like these, in the HN title? The sample size is so small that I don’t think this study is of any use.
- FabHK 5y ago
  n = 501 is not good enough for you? Seems decent enough. "In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample size of around 500–1,000 is a typical compromise for political polls." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll
barry27 5y ago
Exactly. They say this in the study: --- Our empirical analysis is based on original survey data collected from social science students at Goethe University Frankfurt. We are certainly not under the im- pression that our sample is representative of university students in general (or the wider public, for that matter). On the contrary, we purposefully consider the social science studentship at Frankfurt as a most likely case (George and Bennett 2005; Gerring 2007) --- ..a fact that was obviously overlooked by the outraged masses on Twitter.
Animats 5y ago
This is using the easiest sample. Here's another study. National, in the US, of fraternity and sorority members.[1] It's not primarily about censorship, more about Greek life and COVID issues. If a controversy over offensive speech were to occur on your campus, would the administration be more likely to... - Defend the speaker’s right to express his/her views: 23% - Punish the speaker for making the statement: 38% - Not sure: 39% Have you personally ever felt that you could not express your opinion on a subject because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond? - Yes: 50% - No: 42% - Not sure: 9% The sample self-identifies as 46% liberal, 33% conservative. Results differ widely among universities. Not along obvious lines. [1] https://assets.realclear.com/files/2021/04/1801_RealClear-CollegeGreekLifeReportCard-v3.pdf https://assets.realclear.com/files/2021/04/1801_RealClear-Co...

by thayne 5y ago

akudha 5y ago

I have a request - can we add the sample size to studies like these, in the HN title? The sample size is so small that I don’t think this study is of any use.

FabHK 5y ago
n = 501 is not good enough for you? Seems decent enough. "In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample size of around 500–1,000 is a typical compromise for political polls." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll

barry27 5y ago

Exactly. They say this in the study: --- Our empirical analysis is based on original survey data collected from social science students at Goethe University Frankfurt. We are certainly not under the im- pression that our sample is representative of university students in general (or the wider public, for that matter). On the contrary, we purposefully consider the social science studentship at Frankfurt as a most likely case (George and Bennett 2005; Gerring 2007) --- ..a fact that was obviously overlooked by the outraged masses on Twitter.

Animats 5y ago

This is using the easiest sample. Here's another study. National, in the US, of fraternity and sorority members.[1] It's not primarily about censorship, more about Greek life and COVID issues. If a controversy over offensive speech were to occur on your campus, would the administration be more likely to... - Defend the speaker’s right to express his/her views: 23% - Punish the speaker for making the statement: 38% - Not sure: 39% Have you personally ever felt that you could not express your opinion on a subject because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond? - Yes: 50% - No: 42% - Not sure: 9% The sample self-identifies as 46% liberal, 33% conservative. Results differ widely among universities. Not along obvious lines. [1] https://assets.realclear.com/files/2021/04/1801_RealClear-CollegeGreekLifeReportCard-v3.pdf https://assets.realclear.com/files/2021/04/1801_RealClear-Co...