4 ms·

There is a gaping hole in this study which seems to be making the rounds on the major news outlets: why did the authors not control for the arrival of other per

by lstyls 12y ago

There is a gaping hole in this study which seems to be making the rounds on the major news outlets: why did the authors not control for the arrival of other personal dating sites? I don't doubt the correlation but to pin this on craigslist specifically seems dubious at best.

girvo 12y ago
I would think that they're using Craigslist as a proxy for other personals -- on the other hand, I've not read the study, and the increase seems truly correlated to the addition of Craigslist personals, perhaps because of different patterns of use? Perhaps Craigslist "NSA" personals have a higher rate of "hookups" and "risky" sexual behaviour, whereas other types of dating apps don't. I'd love to see whether the data has the same effect when you look at Tinder, as at least for my generation it's similar in target uses to Craigslist personals, as opposed to something like OkCupid and other more traditional dating sites.
smacktoward 12y ago
They looked at Craigslist in terms of its rollout of local sites for the various communities: > Conveniently, the spread of Craigslist provides a natural experiment: local sites were rolled out gradually over time, allowing the comparison of infection rates before and after their arrival... > The data suggests that there was no rise in infection rate in advance of Craigslist opening shop, and there appears to be a bit of lag after a local site opens. This makes sense given that each city will take some time before users discover and start using the service, and the authors looked into this in more detail by tracking the number of ads present in each local site. Within a year of the opening of a local Craigslist, as activity picked up, HIV infections began to rise. The effect remained after the authors controlled for a variety of other demographic factors in each area. So if the data says you can consistently expect a spike in infection rates a year after a local CL opens, and that effect is consistent across communities, it seems unlikely that other sites would be affecting that -- unless they were rolling out their own local sites in the same communities as CL was, at roughly the same time.

by lstyls 12y ago

girvo 12y ago

I would think that they're using Craigslist as a proxy for other personals -- on the other hand, I've not read the study, and the increase seems truly correlated to the addition of Craigslist personals, perhaps because of different patterns of use? Perhaps Craigslist "NSA" personals have a higher rate of "hookups" and "risky" sexual behaviour, whereas other types of dating apps don't. I'd love to see whether the data has the same effect when you look at Tinder, as at least for my generation it's similar in target uses to Craigslist personals, as opposed to something like OkCupid and other more traditional dating sites.

smacktoward 12y ago

They looked at Craigslist in terms of its rollout of local sites for the various communities: > Conveniently, the spread of Craigslist provides a natural experiment: local sites were rolled out gradually over time, allowing the comparison of infection rates before and after their arrival... > The data suggests that there was no rise in infection rate in advance of Craigslist opening shop, and there appears to be a bit of lag after a local site opens. This makes sense given that each city will take some time before users discover and start using the service, and the authors looked into this in more detail by tracking the number of ads present in each local site. Within a year of the opening of a local Craigslist, as activity picked up, HIV infections began to rise. The effect remained after the authors controlled for a variety of other demographic factors in each area. So if the data says you can consistently expect a spike in infection rates a year after a local CL opens, and that effect is consistent across communities, it seems unlikely that other sites would be affecting that -- unless they were rolling out their own local sites in the same communities as CL was, at roughly the same time.