#admittedly we're not trying to compare two samples here we're trying to estimate prevalence

[grison-in-space]

Sure, but I still want to know their priors and sampling techniques. Failing that, using the most easily accessible methods to gather data can still yield potentially interesting information about overall dynamics even if we apply mathematical analyses that assume oversampling of queer users to "correct" the effects of snowball sampling. It's worth noting that sampling information about human sexuality is pretty much uniformly nightmarish in any case; this is actually not that much worse than published peer reviewed sampling efforts, horribly enough.

I am taking everyone who made a poll to gauge the True Percentage of Queers on Tumblr and putting them through a statistics course

[thehardboiledham]

#if i had a nickel for every psych study focusing on queer people that uses snowball sampling for their queer sample #and randomly harvested psych 101 undergrads for their “heterosexual” sample #pretty sure there's a buck in there just from my asexuality studies folder alone #admittedly we're not trying to compare two samples here we're trying to estimate prevalence #but real scientists are also likely to use nonoptimal sampling techniques in experiments if optimal ones are deemed Too Hard #my favorite is “haphazard sampling” == “we have some population of little critters and we grabbed the first n we could catch as our sample” #(it's not random because catchability is a metric of the individual little dudes in question) #anyway in conclusion if they're not going to put their methods section in plain English I'm treating them like a Science paper #and assuming shit is significantly more dodgy than it looks at first blush #at least I know what the sampling bias is on this version and if it gets big enough I can use specific tools to deal with it #even if that is simply comparing number of active accounts to number of responding accounts and assuming various levels of bias response #if we have clear methods we can do math about the obvious flaws #if we don't all we can do is imagine the way we hope data was collected #and look I've been in this game long enough to be Skeptical #also that said: this is largely for fun and sarcasm

I am taking everyone who made a poll to gauge the True Percentage of Queers on Tumblr and putting them through a statistics course