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by misterbowfinger 2852 days ago
Uhhhh... what?

This particular survey featured interviews with 1,058 parents who belong to the panel and have a teen ages 13 to 17, as well as interviews with 743 teens

Link: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/teens-and-screen-time-...

I get that surveys are really hard, but.... 743 seems like a ridiculously low number.

Looks like the surveys are through the "NORC AmeriSpeak panel".

Pew links to this about AmeriSpeak:

http://www.norc.org/PDFs/AmeriSpeak%20Technical%20Overview%2...

I don't know.... maybe someone who understands surveying & statistics can validate these numbers & their significance better than me?

1 comments

Something like this, any sample size 300 or above (assuming it was drawn in a representative way) is generally regarded as legit.

Source: I run and analyze surveys for a living

300 is kind of a paltry number. One high school’s population, for a medium sized town.

Look at one high school, then another. Take each high school from opposite ends of the country. Same results? Not sure about that. But hey, magic number says we’re all good. Run the article, right?

You've just illustrated in your own comment that it really isn't as much about the number of participants as it is about the random distribution of participants.

Would you think it was any better if it was 3000 people from the same area rather than 300? Probably not a lot.

If you pick 300 or more random people throughout the country, you've going to get a pretty accurate representation of the average person.

I'm sure that the results hold up reasonably well if they're taken randomly (whether the survey actually is random is another story, though).
Thanks for correcting! Good to know!

AmeriSpeak seems to have national representation, so I can only assume it was drawn randomly throughout the nation.