The blame game: sports, alcohol, violence, and research

A raft of headlines reported on a fascinating finding that linked State of Origin matches to a spike in domestic violence.

For instance, the SBS report ran the headline "Study exposes 'clear' Origin link to DV" (where DV is domestic violence).

Big story because basically, the data showed that between 6pm on State of Origin night to 6am the following morning, domestic violence increased by 40%. Incidentally, non-domestic violence (blokes beating up other blokes) went up by 70% as well.

Despite this sobering result, the media have leapt on this story, and spun a long drinking yarn. Specifically, they have drawn conclusions about the involvement of alcohol in all of this - even though alcohol consumption is not directly observed in the original study in any way.

 

Research lessons from Census 2016 - making sense of a senseless fail

Let's admit - it's a trainwreck 

The ABS is threatening two million households with fines if they do not complete their census at the same time as being "adamant the quality of data has not been compromised."

It's not so long ago that they reassured the public they would be able to cope with the demand on census night. They were wrong then - and they are wrong now.

The data quality has been hopelessly compromised. For one thing, at this point in time, there are two million out of "close to 10 million dwellings"  that are yet to complete. That is, 20% who have not completed yet.

In the short run, #censusfail was about a data collection problem. The website for collecting the census data was inaccessible on the night of the census at the time that most people would have completed the census form. It remained inaccessible for a further 48 hours. Even longer for some.

The initial response to this colossal data collection glitch was a flurry of fingerpointing and promises that "heads will roll."

However, the bigger problem appears to have been totally overlooked. The real crux of #censusfail is less a data collection fail and more a data quality fail.