My Complaints of Miss Representation

575

My Complaints of Miss Representation

 

                For the past couple weeks, we have been watching Miss Representation in my AP Language & Composition class.  This film attempts to persuade viewers of the prejudice and inequality towards women, in all aspects of life, all across the world.  We watched this film as part of our current subject of study, argument and persuasion.  While watching, I questioned many of the statistics used as evidence in the film, and I decided to investigate.

                I also happen to be taking AP Statistics this year, in which I have learned the correct methods for scientific experiments and gathering information properly representing a population.  I found Miss Representation’s website, and then quickly found the page on which they show the sources for some of their statistics.  Information on the rest of the statistics will be “coming soon.”  I looked at many of these sources, and was overall unimpressed.  I will explain my complaints on one of these sources, just as one example.

                This film states that “65% of American women and girls have disordered eating behavior.”  The link to the source for this statistic was right below on the website’s source page, and it sent me to an article by ABC News on April 26, 2008.  The beginning of the article reads as follows: 

“Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of young American women report disordered eating behaviors, and 10 percent report symptoms of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder, a new survey finds.  The findings -- from an online poll of more than 4,000 women between the ages of 25 and 45 -- found that 75 percent eat, think and behave abnormally around food. The survey was conducted by SELF magazine in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.”

                The problem with this statistic is that Miss Representation generalizes it to the entire population of women and girls in America, which is not appropriate.  This is because this statistic is from an online poll, which used no method of random sampling, but rather convenience sampling.  This means that results weren’t taken from a randomly selected sample of people, but rather from people who clicked on a survey.  This creates response bias, which is a situation in which some of the population in systematically excluded from the survey as a result of the method of sampling. 

                The reason this is a problem is because this survey systematically excluded all people who don’t use a computer, go online less often, are too young to use the internet, didn’t see the survey, chose not to do the survey…the list goes on and on.  It also favored respondents who have little to do, or enjoy participating in online surveys, want to report their problem, or in my teacher Mr. Neff’s words, are really “Gun ho!” about this particular subject.  In the end, the people in this survey create a very poor and very biased representation of the population to which it is generalized.  It is not appropriate to claim that results from this survey apply to all women and girls in America.

                This is just one example of poor statistics used by Miss Representation, and I can honestly say that I saw similar problems with over half of the ones I looked at.  I agree with the claim’s idea that women are still discriminated against, and I don’t need all of these exaggerated statistical claims to convince me.  The numbers just aren’t correct.