Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

I think the data is kinda interesting, but I don't think it answers (or is meant to answer) the questions I'm trying to ask

It is tough to find good data for these questions which are great questions btw.

Yeah, and frankly I don't really know how to feel about standard survey methods... a lot of the time, they're sort of like a sociological version of the pain scale: nobody really knows what a "1" or a "10" is supposed to be, but sure, I guess I'm a 6.

Now you are getting into nerdy territory—are measures used across cohorts equivalent; do they measure the same thing? It is a doable analysis that is most often ignored.

I think this sort of highlights the need to ground claims about population traits to some kind of measurable behavior, e.g. if people are becoming more narcissistic, how might that be reflected in crime/social service/employment data, etc.?

You’ll still have validity questions left and right. To what degree does the behavior actually reflect narcissism, extraversion, etc.? Crime was especially high in early 1990s and dropped. Are kids today higher in A and C now than 1991?

And the meaning of a behavior can change with age or time too, same as questionnaire items. e.g. Taking a photo of yourself and distributing it to 100s of friends is a very different act in 2018 than it was in 1988