On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 5:07 PM, <koltzenb...@w4w.net> wrote: > > > I trust the survey. > > up to you, Sarah > which part of it do you trust? the outcome given the chosen setup? > I have to reasons, either, for any doubt about the results > > I've had this conversation repeatedly regarding Wikimedia related data. Surveys that I have seen on Wikimedia are often self selecting: people answer because they have a specific motivation to do so. There are no apparent efforts to find out how to make sure results are proportionally relevant. Thus, in a global survey of women on WMF, if there are 5 USA women responses about non-involvement and 1 in Indian woman response, the Indian woman's response really should be weighted at least FIVE TIMES the response of the USA responses based on proportionality, and the Australian response should be 1/15th the USA response when drawing nationality conclusions... Good sampling techniques are often not discussed. Beyond that, bad sampling techniques are often given critical support. If 27% percent of your female respondents identify as non-heterosexuals? Is that because Wikipedia attracts MORE lesbians or because the population answering was self selecting and more lesbians were motivated to respond? (I'd guess 10% would be about right, if not lower for the percentage of lesbian contributors on Wikipedia.)
Beyond that, non-answers in surveys are not counted. Rarely do you see some one mention "non-response" as a category of response, or see follow ups that encourage people to fill in the blanks. This can be especially problematic if you consider that some people are culturally indoctrinated not to say anything mean, especially if they fear their survey responses may be made public. > > And having > > numbers is honestly more powerful than saying "oh most editors are men." > > well, given Risker/Anne's statement > > >> (most editors do not gender-identify ... > > no one knows, right? > so my argument says that since most editors do not gender-identify, it > would be wrong to say anything, > really > I sat through some presentation on the gender gap in Argentina. The gender gap research done by a group with their own gender gap problems (not a single woman on the research team) never really explained this. I feel they made some rather faulty assumptions in their research, especially when they assumed there was equal non-gender identifying between genders with out explaining this... and this was then followed up by doing more extensive research based on userbox identification. The last time I looked, the number of men versus the number of women 486 to 90: http://toolserver.org/~jarry/templatecount/index.php?lang=en&name=Template%3AUser+male#bottomvs http://toolserver.org/~jarry/templatecount/index.php?lang=en&name=Template%3AUser+female#bottom. That puts total female users at 15%, not 9%. At its simplest, it is really hard to define the population characteristics of English Wikipedia. > > and hence any study of "gender gap" in Wikipedia (or any other project of > its kind) had better rely on other > data than these - which is why I think that in general such a discussion > of basics might be useful for Laura's > project, too - I'd say go for it, Laura :-) > I like methodology discussions. :D Research design is fun. :D > thank you, yes, you were so kind as to give me the contact data last time > I raised the issue here, for which > thanks again > > I'd be more happy to discuss the matter more thorougly here first > - or maybe anyone knows of another public forum which might be interested > in this topic? > > There is a research list, but it isn't particularly active and I haven't found them to be that interested in engaging in methodological discussions. It tends to be more calls for papers. let us do away with looking at numbers first... as far as I can glean from > discussions like the ones we do on > this list, there is quite ample data other than numbers that allow us to > address the phenomenon of a > perceived gender gap in Wikipedia et al. and of course then take positive > action to remedy any perceived > imbalance > > Positive action is always a good thing. I like doing, even with the occasional error, more than I like sitting around and talking about doing or reporting on things that won't lead to doing. (Which is a problem if you're trying to do academic stuff. Why not conferences? Because conferences interfere with doing.) -- twitter: purplepopple blog: ozziesport.com
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