Do teens hate Twitter?, Teens don’t tweet… or do they?, Why Teens Don’t Tweet, Are teens the driving force behind Twitter?, & Why Do Teens Shun Twitter?
Now I could go on and on about my personal opinions on who I think is right, but that’s not what this entry is all about. From all the chatter around these articles it obvious that the general population is unaware of how much bias there is in survey data collection. In fact if you can find me a completely unbiased survey- I will buy you a pony. Yes, I will buy you a brand new pony. All. For. You.
To understand why it’s impossible to prevent some type of skewed result, I probably should explain what types of things create measurement bias & affect survey results. For example, a user can be feel pressured the give the response the surveyor wants to hear, that’s a response bias. Additionally, many surveys rely only on the population that chooses to respond, which leads to voluntary bias & sometimes because certain groups of people choose not to respond it leads to under coverage bias. Plus all those people who choose not to respond to the survey can create a non-response bias. If you want a more in-depth look at these bias.. click here
Now back to the whole teens twittering debacle. Why are so many of these studies have conflicting results? Well, it’s that bias beast I just outlined. Since you can’t force anyone to take a survey and it’s difficult to create a representative sample of the Internet population, it’s likely one or more of the previously mentioned bias are dramatically impacting the results in each survey. So in some case the results show teens are twittering. In other it shows they’re not. And in some there’s not clear results. It doesn’t matter how big the name is of the company who preformed the study, there”s likely to be some type of flaw to point out. Why do you think Neilsen’s in such hot water for how they measure TV? It’s the harsh realities of survey measurement.
So at the end of the day until companies find a method other than self report to determine a twitterer’s age, you’re going to have to take everything you read with a grain of salt. It’s the facts of life, and the facts of survey data.
