Experts, Polling Guru Reject Flawed NIMF Game Addiction Data
There are no shortage of challengers to Monday's reveal of Prof. Douglas Gentile's National Institute on Media and the Family study of game addiction, which found that one in twelve 8-18 year-olds shows symptoms of game addiction.
Grand Theft Childhood author Dr. Cheryl Olson and Oregon game addiction expert Dr. Jerald Block have both questioned the validity of the study. Now ABC News polling guru Gary Langer explains why the data have been questioned:
The problem: This study was conducted among members of an opt-in online panel - individuals who sign up to click through questionnaires on the internet in exchange for points redeemable for cash and gifts. There are multiple methodological challenges with these things... but the most basic - and I think least arguable - is that they're based on a self-selected "convenience sample," rather than a probability sample. And you need a probability sample to compute sampling error...This is far from an inconsequential issue. The public discourse is well-informed by quality data; it can be misinformed or even disinformed by other data. It is challenging - but essential - for us to differentiate.
Following on the heels of that opinion came an admission of error from Prof. Gentile himself, which Langer describes:
Prof. Gentile got back to me... He said he was unaware the data in his study came from a convenience sample... and that, relying on his own background in market research, he'd gone ahead and calculated an error margin for it. "I missed that when I was writing this up. That is an error then on my part."
No wonder the non-gaming world doesn't know what to think about us...
ABC News Polling Guru Slams NIMF Game Addiction Data [GamePolitics]
tiny dancer
Posted to Miscellany on 22 April 2009
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: flawed data, game addiction, nimf, study
I call shenanigans. How the hell does he not know where the hell is data came from and how it was taken? And if he actually doesn't, he's a piss poor scientist and doesn't deserve to have those three letters after his name.
Also, anything that comes NIMF should be immediately suspicious. They have an incredibly biased agenda when it comes to video games.
Good rule of thumb: Whenever an organization feels the need to put the word "family" right in their name, it usually means they have a reactionary, socially conservative bias.
I trust NIMF's information about video games like I trust Focus on the Family's information about gay and transgender people.