Research Monday 5: Wrapping It Up

This is the last day of this series.  You might want to end it by reading this audit study about white privilege on Australian buses.  Audit studies are very useful, because they manage to hold lots of stuff constant while analyzing the impact of something like race or gender or ethnic group on the way people are treated.

That "holding constant" means that the actors playing the roles in the study are trained to do everything the same.  For instance, if the actors are to look for jobs in the study they are provided with equally good resumes and trained to ask and answer all questions the same way.  If this is done well, any differences in the average treatment of, say, men and women or blacks and whites can be attributed fairly safely to discrimination.

And here are some of my thoughts about the kind of group blog we'd need for the critical evaluation of research and its popularizations.

No, there will be no quiz.  But I hope you found some of this series useful.