On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 8:27 AM, gustavo <gustavo@soc.haifa.ac.il> wrote:
More on this issue, selection bias is present.
I don't think it's fair or accurate to say that of this study since it's not attempting to generalize the results to the entire population (I don't think; did I miss that?). It would be nice if the Fb researchers were to exhibit more awareness of the access and participation inequalities in the US and abroad but I'm not sure that we can blame them for those inequalities or find fault in their internal-looking research that seeks only to evaluate their population of users in situ. Personally, I am slightly annoyed by how casually the terms "race" and "ethnicity" are tossed about and used interchangeably. It's often necessary to mix the two ideas due to the limitations of one's data, particularly when using an extant data set, but it should still explicitly be recognized as a limitation. Kevin