Notes

Title: The Kids are alright.
Authors: Sarah Kliff, Soo Oh, and Sarah Forstenson
The “Kids are alright ” report is an informative report. This report was made in 2016 June 6, by three authors, Sarah Kliff, Soo Oh, and Sarah Forstenson. Sarah is a respected investigative journalist who works for the New York times, her speciality is health care. She attended and graduated from Washinton University with a bachelor degree in health care, Soo Oh works for the Wall Street Journal doing data visualization and Sarah Foreston is a political editor for a well known a site called the FiveThirtyEight. The one thing that all these ladies lave in common is that they all work for VOX, Vox is the site that “The Kids are alight” sats reports were published. Vox is a site that anyone can post on, provided they are a member and pay the sign-up fee, the main content on Vox is blogging and explanatory journalism.

“ The Kids are alright” stats report plan is to show how kids today are less naughty and delinquent compared to earlier generations. The comparisons that the stats report shows are; Sex, Tobacco, alcohol and drugs, and safety. At the end of the report, it shows a graph with the Y-axis being the situation ( had sex, tired alcohol etc) and the X-axis being past years tracking back to 1991- 2015 and the data is recorded with the percentage of children who have experienced it. I would imagine the target audience is parents trying to get an idea of what there kids to doing in there day-to-day lives. In this case, its Lawrence’s grandmother trying to understand what her grandson is doing.

The purpose of this report is to show the reader that Kids today are better behaved than kids in the past generations. I think these piece could also be used to reassure parents that they shouldn’t worry as much about their kids, hence the title, “The Kids are Alright” We can see that this is true and according to the evidence that Sarah, Soo and Sarah have provided.

To measure devolvement over the years, the researchers used discrete data and they used the variables of quantitative and dichotomous. We know this because the X-asis was years and in this case, years was expressed in a number form( 1991, 1993 etc). We know that the used dichotomous because the only possible answers that could have been used were yes/no eg. Q- Have you had sex in the past 3 months? A- No. I think that using dichotomous variables makes it easier to graph, especially in this case because they used percentages. Another thing to consider is that researchers are trying to show that the percentage is the dependant variable and the years is the independent variable. As the years increase the percentage decrease ie, the decrease in the percentage is dependant on the years going up.

The sampling method used was random sampling. IN my option this is the best way to get an unbiased and the most reliable data. Hower sending a survey to random teenagers means you have no guarantee that the teenagers will answer the survey and answer it truthfully. To get the Data the researchers use a sample method of an online survey this In the report they said that 90% of the sample population answered which means that the other 10% either didn’t have access to an online source which therefor excludes a part of the population, possibly the lower class population. Or the high school teenagers just couldn’t be bothered.

This survey has a lot of room for non-sampling errors and sampling errors. The obvious one is The sample size that they used for this report is not a fair representation of all the teenagers across the world. Only 10,000 teenagers were interviewed and all of those teenagers are form the USA. IN the report they said that “The population is all highschool student in the USA” But then it says that 10,000 people where surveyed. This does not account for the other 15,290,000 other students in the US or the other 284,052 in NZ IN other countries there are different social cultures. This is also a sampling-error as.

A couple of non-sampling errors that I noticed was a coverage error, the data that they collected was labelled on the graph as “teens behaviour” however they only gave the survey to only highschool teens. This means that they did not account for the 1.2 million high school dropouts in the US. The researchers either need to change the label of the graph to “highschool teens behaviour ” or give surveys the teens who have dropped out of school in order to minimise the non-sampling error and get more reliable data this is a non-sampling error because this is biased against the highschool dropout as it does not include their views.

Another non-sampling error is a response error because the sampling method was a survey this means that the survey needed to be constructed unbiased and without leading questions, the context of this survey is very personal and students may feel invaded and could lie about the information, this will sway the results. A way they could minimise this non-sampling error is to emphasise the fact that this survey is anonymous.

In conclusion, I think that this stat report was designed well and the research carried out by Sarah Kliff, Soo Oh, and Sarah Forstenson was to a medium standard. I think ways to improve this stats report is to make sure that the sampling and non-sampling error is minimized to do this they need to find a way to make sure that people who answer the survey are from form a rage of different ethicality and social class