The conclusions of a study that defies my personal experiences

[PooshTun]

Have you ever read a conclusion from a study that is at odds with your personal experience?

The Sunday Times had the headline 'Minority students born in UK can't understand English'. Judging by other studies, many white students born in the UK can't understand English either :o

During my time as a student I have lived in digs in heavily Asian areas where the 'locals' speak English with heavy brummie accents :) I wonder if any one has mentioned to them that they aten't supposed to be able to understand English.

Are you perhaps confusing "conclusion from a study" with "sensationalist headline in a newspaper"? There is often only an extremely tenuous connection between media coverage of a study and what it actually said.

Yes, what did the actual study say? Was the methodology sound?

For example, this is another recent news report that could well be about the same study (I can't see the Times article because of the paywall) but puts a very different spin on it.

There isn't much details about methods used. It just goes on about warnings from 'concerned' experts. The article specifically quotes Philida Schellekens, author of the national standards for translators, addressing a conference run by Cambridge Assessment, the exam board.

I'm not out to dissect their methodology and to pick fault with their sampling technique :) I'm just saying that on the rare occasions some expensive study pass a conclusion on something I know something about, I'll be there going "what are these experts smoking?" Makes me wonder if the experts are talking crap the rest of the time when they talk about stuff I know nothing about.

I was just wondering if other MNetters have come across experts talking crap about stuff they know about.

But it sounds like you dont know for sure fully what was said, its context, or the evidence that it was based on?

The media loves to try to pull controversy from things said by academics, but I have usually found that when you look at what was actually said it was something totally innocuous.

Exactly. If you base your outrage on the media reports then you're not really talking about what the studies have actually shown.

I remember once reading a study and the associated media coverage. The study was actually about comparing life expectancy between various socioeconomic groups in the UK, and as one aspect of that they'd used various standard indicators of socioeconomic status, including car ownership (obviously a crude measure that you wouldn't use on a case-by-case basis, but effective at the population level). The media version? "Researchers claim that having a car makes you live longer" complete with quotes from luminaries such as Stirling Moss about why that was obviously nonsense (I assume that he was in your position of going "what are these experts smoking?").

Looking at this particular case, there is a Daily Mail article too, although they appear to have based it on reading the Sunday Times article (which is handy for our purposes as it probably gives a reasonably good idea of what was in the ST article).

Dr Schellekens' slides from the Cambridge Assessment presentation are here and her report for Cambridge ESOL here. It's immediately clear that what she was actually talking about was strategies for the teaching of English as an Additional Language in schools and how they differs from strategies for teaching English as a first language, with some reflections on what it means for long-term prospects of children who don't acquire good English before the school-leaving age. The only study she mentions is one of her own from 2005; it doesn't seem to have been published AFAICS so all we have to go on is her own description. From that it doesn't appear that the study was in one school and wasn't a quantitative study, still less intended to estimate the scale of the problem on a local or national level. Rather it was a qualitative look at the experience of some students and their teachers.

If that's what the article in the Sunday Times was based on, then I think your question needs to be "what are these journalists smoking?" and the answer in this particular case probably "whatever Murdoch tells them to smoke". The experts are quietly getting on with being experts and being completely misrepresented.

Sorry, that should read "...it appears [rather than "doesn't appear"] that the study was in one school and wasn't a quantitative study, still less intended to estimate the scale of the problem on a local or national level."

Good and interesting summing up there by CaseyShraeger! I agree with these conclusions completely.

Since having had to conduct my own research project I have come to realise that the reporting of scientific research by the mainstream media is totally useless in almost 100% of cases (and no, I haven't done any statistical analysis on that ).

Research is something that we are quite good at in Britain, but don't ever read about it in the newspapers and think that they have summed it up accurately for you. If something sparks your interest then track down the original research and find out what it really says.

I would also add that just because the results or conclusions of results disagree with your own experience that doesn't mean they are wrong!

Whenever a disease makes the headlines (remember the flesh eating media circus from about 5 years ago?) the journo would say something like 1 in 10 people in the UK suffers from xyz.

If you were to collect all these statements and add them all together then one can only conclude that either 17 out of 10 people have a disease which mathematically cannot be possible or else there are people with several diseases or else the media and/or scientists are talking crap.

Hmmm - it's so difficult to generalise.

I would say that most children I have encountered of foreign-born parents speak perfect English - but these are people who prioritise education and are (or are heading towards being) middle class.

I do know one mother of a child in dd's class who I assumed to be a moderately recent arrival in the UK because her English is very poor indeed. Chatting to her and her husband, it turns out she was born here. How could a person go through school (or maybe she didn't?) and not acquire a decent command of English? I suppose if you only consort with other people who speak your parents' language, watch satellite tv programmes from other countries etc etc you would be cocooned in a minority culture. I would assume that it is particularly a girl problem, sadly.

gramercy - I have met a number of people who are/were in the forces and lived abroad for 2-5 years. I assumed they had a good command of the local language, but I was wrong! One person couldn't pronounce the town he lived in for 5 years!!!

Of course it is possible for a person to have more than one disease . Why wouldnt it be?

God must hate that person for Him to 'give' one person pancreatic cancer, impotence and premature balding :-)