Most useless article of the day
In the Atlanta Journal Constitution's "Woman to Woman" column, Andrea Cornell Sarvady and Shaunti Feldhahn argue whether or not feminism is to blame for the 'happiness gap'. You know, the one that doesn't exist. Sigh.
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Did the New York Times think no one would look at the happiness gap graphic? Anyone who has taken a statistics course can see that at least 6 of those activities have no significant difference. And there's probably so much variability within the groups that perhaps some of the other activities, like medical care or set table/do dishes (I don't know why these two activities were put together since they're completely different tasks) have no significant difference either.
I have a problem with the mainstream media reporting on scientific research because journalists, I imagine, haven't learned how to read a professional journal article or an SPSS output. The words "statistically" and "signifcant" don't often appear in a story covering a study, let alone next to each other. And they probably don't know that just because an article has been published in a professional journal doesn't mean the study wasn't full of methodological errors.
I used to read "woman to woman" faithfully when I was in high school. Back when dialup was the norm..back when Dianne Glass was the 'left' feminist. She died about two months ago.
Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that Shaunti doesn't really believe in what she writes, b/c most of the time her argument is so broth thin...
Also, i don't like the way they seem to handle each other with kid gloves.
I am not sure this has been posted here already, but Justin Wolfers (the co-author with Betsy Stevenson of the "declining female happiness" study) posted a reply to the "Language Log" post that you cited eariler as evidence that the results simply "didn't exist."
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/10/the-significanc.html
I think it's OK to be skeptical of their results, but they are good researchers who do careful work and I don't think their work should be immediately dismissed. They find the declining female happiness in 6 different data sets (GSS, Virginia Slims Poll, BHPS, ISPP, Monitoring the Future, and Eurobarometer). They deserve credit for uncovering this consistent pattern across such a wide range of data sources.