Ah this is all true. Back when I was in journalism school, I remember a single class we had on "numbers." We were tasked with using calculators to decipher the "validity" of fake press releases. Statistical significance? No sir, we did not study that! Probably because our journalism professors and future editors don't understand statistics. We did do "interviewing," which I must say, was much much better training than any interview methods I learned in graduate school. Upon my entry into graduate school, I recall being shocked at how common qualitative research was. I had thought it inferior because it didn't have statistical significance (I had done my own studying beyond the proscribed journalism curriculum). I wondered how all these academics get off on saying they do "valid" research when they had sample sizes as small as 10! Imagine! Of course it took me awhile, but I learned how qualitative validity works. Most people, journalists or not, have no idea how qualitative validity works, and have only a passing understanding of quantitative validity (something vaguely to do with "sample size" they imagine). On Dec 17, 2007 3:32 PM, Mary-Helen Ward <mhward@usyd.edu.au> wrote:
Fair enough!
However, I, and other qualitative researchers I meet with at the University, have observed over some time that (at least in Australia) journalists find it easier to ignore or poke fun at qualitative research than at statistically-based material. If there are what they consider 'figures' to hang a story on they seem much more comfortable even if they don't interpret them well. Interesting, they don't seem to see their own backgrounders and feature articles in which they canvass opinion, mash it up and report it, often really well, as qualitative research.
M-H
On 18/12/07 1:04 AM, "Eszter Hargittai" <info@webuse.org> wrote:
Mary-Helen mentioned earlier that journalists seem to feel more comfortable discussing quantitative results. That comment made me chuckle. If you only knew how much time I (and I suspect others in similar shoes) spend explaining relatively simple statistical findings to journalists only to have the results misrepresented in the end you would not make that assumption. I suspect it's just another case where that comment about journalists' coverage of other areas applies: if it's not your specialty you're more likely to think they cover it well.:-}
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