LOOOOOONG Post

[Guest guest]

Ceep, I am real new to this site but have been involved in 2 others

for about 6 months. I certainly appreciated your comments, although

it was rather long. I am one of those people that can occasionally

state my opinion as fact. So I appreciated your honesty. I

generally try to express what I am saying as an opinion or, atleast

where I have gotten the information.

Just for background information - I have an Associates degree in

Business. I had every intention on becoming an accountant but

realized I hated the field, I hated punching numbers. SO I left

school to find out what I wanted to be and spent 12 years doing

accounting. DOn't figure. I finally returned to school and earned

my degree in Social work with a minor in Sociology. The reason I

mention this is that on top of having to do tons of research work, I

also have taken 9 hours of statistics (6 hours of business, 3 hours

of social) as well as a computer class on how to compile the data and

process the reports. I have taken several Social Research classes as

well

Because of this, I have learned to take statistical data with a grain

of salt. There is so many variables that go into statistical data

that it is unbelievable. First, you have to make sure that what you

are wanting to measure is truly what you are measuring. When doing

social research, a lot of the surveys you do for social policies

depends on how a question is worded. If worded incorrectly, you are

not truly measuring what you are wanting. (For example, if you want

to know how colors effect people, asking them if they know what a

particular color is does not measure how it truly effect them.) Then

you have to look at study size. The more subjects you have the

better your study. The fact that you tested something on 10 people

may be totally different then if you tested the same thing on 10,000

people. I also tend to look at wording. If there is a lot of

could's, maybes, mights, looks as if, etc. that tells me that the

findings were probably not conclusive.

I guess what I am trying to say in all of this is that I need to be

careful how I word things. I do not intentionally mean to offend

anyone and would not want to. Thank you for sharing.

Lori O.