Canberra kids either healthier or better liars [with poll]

Lets be honest more kids/teens are doing drugs, they dont report it becasue they know you will try and stop them. so duh they’re better liars.

Erg0 said :

Do people still say “cool”?

*shakes head* people don’t speak anymore.

Incidentally, you’ll usually find that the designers of the survey have made an effort to account for self-selection bias, social desirability bias, etc. Most researchers are fairly pragmatic about the reliability (or otherwise) of the numbers produced by this kind of survey, but you won’t often see the margin of error mentioned in the press release.

This survey might be better described as an analysis of how “cool” it is to tell people that you’re taking drugs this year.

Do people still say “cool”?

“Fewer instances of sunburn” – umm, that would be ‘fewer reported incides of sunburn’. Why, in a community that has at least some understanding of statistics, do we allow this sort of crap to pass by? This example is by no means confined to any political party.

Jon, your figures do not pass even the most basic statistical analysis. The Canberra Times, filled with Arts graduates who want to ‘ change the world’, apparently has no-one on its staff who can read a weather map.

Why is it, in this city of vast knowledge and experience about almost everything, that absurd statements like the above keep ocurringf?