• ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      500 people surveyed? 29% variance? This is click bait for the real narcissist: the author.

      Firstly, the study starts off with the researcher complaining about noise pollution around the university area. They then proceed to only study young adults in the university area. 529 business students to be exact.

      The sample, 529 students, isn’t a bad size for a pilot study, but isn’t large enough to draw worthwhile conclusions. There is an adequate gender distribution to support their claims, but the age distribution is exclusively focused around younger populations. As the average age is 18 among a university population, there is likely very little age distribution. The study is only focusing on a very specific age population and results cannot be extended to other age groups.

      Second, the choice of questions asked to the participants is just horrendously biased. The researcher specifically asks about participants own cars. Given that this is a university sample, there are likely many students who do not have a car. Those students without a car would have inherently scored lower, thus biasing the results.

      Overall, the researcher did a poor job with their sampling distribution as well as their choice in questioning. The results cannot be extended to more general audiences and are applicable to first and second year university students at the Ontario Western University.