My twitter followers are obvs not a representative sample of the population, I am VIVIDLY AWARE OF THIS i am not an idiot. They tend to be male, white, 25-35yo, disproportionately libertarian (and otherwise politically split), living in mostly the US.
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And if I did something dumb like asking my twitter followers if they're into FPS video games and then using that number to extrapolate to the general population then yes your critique would be good, however unfortunately I am not in fact this dumb
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And it's *okay* to ask selected populations about information likely to be heavily biased by the selection (like video games) as long as you interpret it in context and don't fail to consider that selection effects might have modified your results.
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Things that *are* interesting and have higher chances of extrapolating are lots of types of correlations; in this case, I asked about BDSM and abusive childhoods. Maybe the correlation that showed up is due to selection bias, but how would that work?
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I would have had to, somehow, disproportionately selected for not just people into BDSM, but for ppl into BDSM who were abused. My twitter must have some way of being that sort of dissuades non-abused BDSM people from following me (and *doesn't* dissuade non-abused non-BDSM ppl)
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So we have two possible realities here - either I'm somehow having a strange selection effect that's very precise and cuts across two separate questions (bdsm and abuse), *or* there's an actual effect that correlates BDSM and childhood abuse. Of the two, the latter is less absurd
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But this is the thing that bothers me - people don't realize that proposing a selection bias is proposing another theory for the results, and that depending on the type of question asked, this theory they're proposing is often extremely unlikely.
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It's like ppl just register that I'm asking through twitter, know that my twitter account doesn't have a good sampling of the population, and then assume this means that selection bias is a good theory for any sort of twitter poll finding. No! This isn't how it works!
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And I'm NOT saying that my childhood abuse/bdsm poll is conclusive, there's a lot of possible explanations for it and I'd want to replicate this in a better, more careful and detailed survey to check on other causes. But yelling 'selection bias' just makes me wanna punch you
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the way it's delivered to me is often a bad, lazy critique that doesnt understand how bias works or how it impacts things we check for. If you tell me *how* it might be selection bias then im happy to engage: what is your theory for the selection pressures on my respondents?
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If you're like 'hey aella, i think this might be mostly just due to selection bias because you have a high following in this one BDSM recovery from childhood abuse forum that you didn't know about", I'd be like whoah, that's a great point I had no idea
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Counterpoint, you have extremely uneven demographics following you in several categories from belief structure to gender to race. So this is not a robust survey with regards to a reflection of the general public.
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Yes, true! I also often test this explicitly by asking questions together, and then also separate (at different times) to see if total % clusters are different.
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Rarely do people take the time to think before reacting… so most often they are not providing anything of value… kind of like this response… except sometimes it may elicit a new position or thought for you
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Someone choosing to answer your poll on BDSM abuse might be more likely to be into BDSM and have been abused.
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Like the thread, thanks. How about hypothesis that people who are into BDSM and more likely to interpret and admit abuse in their childhood?
Cuz they possibly already got the admitting unpopular truths about themselves part?
Or cuz they more often went to therapy?
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I really think such polls collect some data and respect you for continuing in public.
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I couldn't do that not because it's worthless but because I'm weaker than my perfectionism and fear of that same critics.
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Nice thread, I think this is an example of data Puritanism. Or maybe purpose blindness?