lock up your daughters

[jno]

Survey out today of 1000 teenage girls (15-19) shows: half see Abi Titmuss as the best role model, against 33% for Jordan, 9% for JK Rowling and 7% for Anita Roddick. 11% want to achieve something with their lives, 89% would prefer to be a celebrity. 63% wanted to be a glamour model more than anything else; 25% chose lap dancing and 3% chose teaching. So my question is: how fast is Britain going down the pan?

[Octavius]

Teacher - �20k per annum

Lapdancer -

Jordan - �20k+ per photo sesh

[jno]

Thank you for trying, Octavius, I think I get the drift and have awarded you three stars and a night at Stringfellows for your trouble. In my day girls didn't go in for lap dancing at all... no matter how much the boys implored...

As to the actual options offered, I suspect that was about all. I believe Germaine Greer also got about 3% as a role model, presumably as punishment for being over 20. Even so... I would like to think that being offered the choice of 'tart, slag or teacher', a few more might have gone for teacher.

[Octavius]

Why thank you jno

The girls in my school had had too many kids by the time they were old enough to be lapdancers.

From what I can gather, the tvlab thing is a website for young impressionable teens (future world leaders) who enrole by text onto a service in order to be bombarded with celeb goss and polls on their mobiles.  Hardly scientific research but c'est la vie.  It is most probable that most of them didn't know who Germain Greer was (unless they watch BBC2 at midnight) but you never know.  Yoof of today eh...

[Oneeyedvic]

Stevie21 - just to pull you up on a littel point 1000 is not a small survey,

In marketing terms a "statistically significant number" is used for research purposes for questions. This does need to be calculated for each type of question, however, regarding purchases for consumer goods, it is in the low hundreds, and for highly emotive issues such as politics it is in the low thousands.

 

A thousand people taken in the proper way (ie different areas with different socio economic groups etc and not outside one school), is actually a verygood sample.

 

Other factors include the weighting of options, the type of question (eg: question 1) - who would you rather be like Abi Titmus or Jordan - shock horror - 53% of girls would like to be like Jordan - this is not a good question) 

My original 'answer' to this question was who conducted this poll - this would give a good indication as to whether the sample was a good sample.

Without that information, the survey is totally meningless

[stevie21]

Mr Oneeyedvic, while I agree with the vast majority of what you've just said I still think that 1000 people for this type of survey is a small number and the results are therefore very easily skewed. These surveys are very, very easy to conduct on larger samples.
The type of question asked probably totally negates this concern anyway - the fact that I'd guess there to be loaded/leading questions far outweighs the impact of the sample size.

I've studied statistics (oh the joys!) and while I'm not basing the "1000 is not enough" on any text in front of me, I am going on the stupid assumption that it is carried out in the spirit of trying to find out something useful in the way that real research is. This research has to have a sample big enough to support your main questions (what percent want to be lapdancers) and also sub-questions (how do 15 year olds differ from 16/17/18/19 year olds on this same question?). With the latter you're comparing a much smaller fraction of your overall sample and can't rely on comparing 200 people at a time.

I can't believe I've gone from "wahey!!! 63% of women are glamour models" to "booo, that's not scientific"
Somebody slap me :(

[Morrisonker]

I very much doubt that the survey actually had an accurate sample.  I don't know any teenage girls that want to be glamour models or lap dancers (even though I have joked about it after plunging myself further into student debt).

Of course girls want to be glamourous and popular, and it's sad that these so called role models are tacky and overtly sexual, but can anyone name a sexy young female intellectual who is in the public eye?  No.  Don't be too hasty to judge these teenagers, they are basically just victims of some middle aged, middle classed man sitting in his office and deciding who goes on TV/the front page. 

Bah.  I'm 19 and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, it's changed a lot in the last 5 years.  I'm sure the majority will grow out of these urges by the time they are old enough to be able to do it.

[Oneeyedvic]

'Mr' Stevie21.....

Whilst we agreee that the quetions are in all likelihood weighted badly, I still maintain 1000 is actually a good number :

http://www.mori.com/omnibus/index.shtml

(if you can't be bothered to check the link - MORI - probably the most recognised and trusted name in the industry, will only normally interview 2000 people for any poll)

[acw]

Morrisonker - you went to uni though!  If these 15-17 year olds within the group have their hearts set on fame (I'd love to see what % would go on Big Brother given half a chance!) then they may well not bother with any post 16 qualifications at all.  Then if they change their minds at 19 (or even my grand old age of 22) it will be a BIG step for them to go back to college with a load of 17 year olds and sit A levels etc.  Ok - so plenty of people DO do it.  What I'm saying is that I knew at 16 that I wanted to be a lawyer, so I knew I wanted to do law, so I knew to pick A Levels that supported that degree application.  Decisions DO filter back (not necessarily, but often).

I think it's a shame that people like June Sarpong weren't on the list.  I've no idea how smart she really is, but she always comes across as quite sharp and TV presenting is glamorous, but far better than glamour modelling or lapdancing.  Hopefully SHE would have got more votes!  Or Cat Deely even. 

[Lillabet]

I'm guessing firstly that it wasn't a free choice. People were allowed to pick from a set number of people and a set number of jobs. You'd expect more of a range of answers if you could make free choices.

Secondly there are issues with the sample. Regardless of size of sample the selection method is not exactly unbiased. These are teenagers with a particularly high level of interest in celebrity and celebrity gossip who spend time on a website they have subscribed to in order to discuss these things.

It is reminiscent of the Hite report into sexual behaviour in the US. The report's author - Shere Hite compiled a report based on questionnaires and said that her results reflected the sexual behaviours and interests of the American people. It showed a lot more promiscuity, experimentation, fetishism etc than would have been expected. The conclusion drawn was that her method of distributing her questionnaires had had an effect on the results. The questionnaires had been placed inside pornographic magazines and given out in sex shops. By doing this she had overrepresnted the views of one group and completely bypassed the majority.

87.65% of the time you can get the results you want and make statistics fit your agenda through research design... ;-)

[stevie21]

Vic (I feel we're friendly enough... haha) - I do agree that for this survey 1000 is probably fine. I just made about 10 assumptions and concluded that it wasn't enough.

I still say that this type of survey is easily done on a far larger sample but it's probably the case that the good people at MORI have done previous surveys on 1000 people, checked the stats and percentages and then gone on to survey a further 9000 people only to find that the results don't change significantly.

My point is valid elsewhere about sample sizes on more detailed research, but misplaced here.
I hang my head in shame.

[magicdice]

15-19 year old girls have a sense of humour. if i was asked to fill that in, i'd pick abi titmuss & lapdancing.

of course, i don't actually have a role-model as such, and in october i'm going to do a maths degree... but lapdancing just sounds so much more exciting!