Question
You have probably encountered conflicting research reported in the mass media. For example, one study might indicate that drinking red win improves health while another study indicates that it does not. Speculate on the reasons why various researcher might obtain different results when studying the same problem.
I think a lot of reasons this can happen is different sample size. One research study might use a sample size of 100 while the other uses a much larger sample size of 1000 which can create very different results. If you have 10 times more people in your sample, then it can led to different results
Another reason why researcher can lead to different results is who and what are they asking. What exactly is the context of the study. Are both under the same context similar?
Is the research method to be trusted? Research can be easily manipulated by only asking certain people to get the results you want. For example if someone wants to find out on average how many Americas go to a gym per week and all they ask is people that have gym membership.
Your question about sample sizes and accuracy is dealt with in statistics with the confidence interval. The greater the sample size of the sample, the narrower the confidence interval.
A rough rule of thumb for the relationship between your sample size and its accuracy is to divide one by the square root of the number of people in your sample. So in your example of 100 people you’re looking at a 10% margin of error, while with 1000 people you can reasonably expect your margin of error to be in the 3.2% range.
If you haven’t taken it I’d recommend a statistics class, it’s amazing where you’ll find the knowledge of value.
On an entirely different note: Just how damn many of us in this class will be graduating in December? I swear you’re at least the 4th person besides myself I’ve seen with that date. Best of luck to you!
In today’s society, you see a lot of people taking statics to benefit themselves in the argument. It always is centred around politics I have noticed. Certainly, with different sizes of groups, you will get different results. That is why it is so hard to have accuracy when it comes to comparing numbers. Wes is right, as much as I hated Stats class it helped me understand so much in the world of total accuracy.
Hi all. that is based on observation and measurement of phenomena, as directly experienced by the researcher. The data thus gathered may be compared against a theory or hypothesis, but the results are still based on real life experience.
https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/how-to/research-methods/conduct-empiricalresearch#:~:text=Empirical%20research%20is%20research%20that,based%20on%20real%20life%20experience.
The mass media has no control on what is posted whether it’s truthful and accurate or not. The only information you should believe is if it comes from credible sources and some times those sources make errors.
I agree that there can be a massive variability between studies and one thing that does affect the outcomes is who is funding the research. When a certain outcome is desired or even just expected the studies tend to skew in that direction. The methods used in the research also can change the outcomes since there is significant variability in people as well as methods. Some people have allergies that others do not and they can vary in intensity. In the wine study for instance if you happen to have a person who has a slight allergy to what you are giving them it could skew your results significantly especially since no studies have a massive population that they are studying.