Due May 14. Late deadline May 21
Reading:
Study Questions
In this assignment you will examine evidence about sexting. Number your answers carefully. Type your answers in the answer box or save in a document called Asn10 and upload to Etudes.
Read the editorial article "Which is Epidemic - Sexting or Worrying about It?". Click the link to open a 2 page PDF file containing the article.
1. (2 points) Give an example from the article of any of the types of evidence described in chapters 8 and 9 of Asking the Right Questions (intuition, personal experience, testimonial, appeal to authority, personal observation, research study, case examples, analogies). Identify the text and what type of evidence it is.
2. (2 points) Repeat #1 with a different type of evidence.
3. (2 points) This article describes a research study that was sponsored by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com. Do an Internet search to locate the home page for one of these organizations. Find a description of what the organization does. Name the organization and briefly describe what they do. Questions to consider: Are they public or private? How do they make their money? Do you think they might be biased. (you must say why or why not)?
4. (4 points) According to the article, David Finkelhor states that teens who answer online polls "are more likely to be people who engage in this type of activity."
a. Is Mr. Finkelhor an expert? How do you know?
b. Is he using intuition? What in the article leads you to believe he is or is not?
5. (2 points) Reg Baker says that the people who participate in online panels are people who spend lots and lots of time online. Could this skew the study results by leaving groups of people out of the results? Describe how or why.
6. (3 points) Terry Humphreys thinks that "semi-nude" is ambiguous. Bill Albert says it is not. A judge thinks that a 15 year old girl shown in a bra is semi-nude. If semi-nude is ambiguous, it should not have been asked as a question.
a. Who is a more qualified expert, Albert or Humphreys. Why?
b. How could the survey question be reworded to make it less ambiguous by using Albert's definition of semi-nude?
c. Do you think the survey results would have been the same with the reworded question? 22% of teenage girls said they had shared semi-nude or nude photos. Why?
Go to http://realpsychology.com/node/12 and look through the introduction and results pages for "Sexting...Is It All About Power?
7. Use the page links to find out about Susan Lipkins. What are her qualifications?
8. (2 points) Susan Lipkins is the owner and publisher of the Real Psychology web site. How does this impact the quality of the information?
9. (2 points) Describe in detail who the subjects of the study on sexting were and how it was conducted.
10. (2 points) The study included a power profile. Look at the Results of Sexting Study section. What was the unexpected result of power and sexting?
11. (4 points) What suggestions does the author offer to limit sexting?
12. (4 points) The results of the study say that 66% of teens sexted. This is 3 times higher that the first article you read. In that article, Bilyek says that 22% is inflated. Why do you think that Dr. Lipkins results were so much bigger?