Let It Go? Disney Princess Culture Isn’t Toxic, Study Finds
n=151, 87% white cohort, two sites, one in Utah and one in Idaho, data correlation in the 'fair' to 'poor' range yet here we are, "Disney princesses aren't bad for self-esteem".
Sigh. Hypothesis testing is just not a concept that these social psychology types seem to ever grasp (and of course I say that a someone who almost never reads anything in that realm beyond what makes these splashy headiness, so shame on me). If you're testing the hypothesis that Disney princess exposure is correlated with negative gender stereotypes, and you find that not to be the case for this cohort, with these limitations, then that's the most you can say about it. Period. End of story. No exceptions. If you find that the data hint at the exact opposite of your hypothesis, then you say, "Hmmm, this is potentially interesting, can we phrase a question and power a study to answer this new hypothesis?" Anything else is statistical cheating, and it's worthless garbage, scientifically. Part of me regrets not studying statistics more deeply. The trouble is it's a really, really, really boring discipline, so it's hard to get excited about the coursework. So important to understand if you're trying to say anything worthwhile about populations though. Newspapers should have statistics consultants on speed dial.
My irritation with statistics is that you are basically testing the accuracy of your model. If you thoroughly understand the subject of your model, the model will likely reflect reality. If you don't thoroughly understand the subject of your model, your statistical analysis will discourage you from understanding it further.
That's true. It's been postulated by some statisticians that a perfectly controlled experiment quickly becomes tautological. You have to live with ambiguity and pay of that is choosing the model you think is most appropriate. But the thing you can't do if you want to learn anything worthwhile is to choose your study question post hoc, as they've very clearly done here. You see that with drug studies all the time: "Well it didn't work in the way we said it would, but if you only look at white women who are between 35 and 47 with a history of familial diabetes and who spend more than 6 hours a day watching Real Housewives reruns it's a home run! (n = 4 out of 1800 studied)"
