Re:60% of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances
by brazzledazzle on Thursday January 14, 2016 @02:27PM
(#10903741)
Honest question: do those confidence levels account for how the participants are chosen? Or is it assumed that it's random?
Re:60% of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances
by smt88 on Thursday January 14, 2016 @02:51PM
(#10903935)
Randomness is assumed for my number. However, there are lots of ways this survey could have been biased:
- women who were assaulted, harassed, or threatened have already left SV
- women who were assaulted, harassed, or threatened were more likely to respond
- women who don't believe in an anti-female culture in SV were more likely to respond
- etc.
It's up to the designers of the survey to control for these things within the survey and/or disclose them. Unfortunately, they haven't.
Furthermore, if there are 400,000 tech workers in Silicon Valley, then 200 gives us a less than 8% margin of error (95% confidence level). This still gives us a result of at least 50%.
But we're not surveying the entire tech industry, we're surveying women in Silicon Valley, which is a number much closer to 100,000 (although that doesn't radically change our margin of error).