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  • Originally posted by Sam View Post
    No, that would be the inner cry of someone clinging to anecdotal testimony even after it's normative value is refuted by empirical study.
    Of course they are right because in your little mind:

    liberal = true and infallible
    conservative = wrong and evil

    and nothing will ever change it. Your dodge is noted though. Did they include the relationship between parents or not? Since it seems they didn't (your dodge shows that much) you're attacking a pile of burning straw. See, the argument I actually hold to is that gay marriage is just one problem, among many. No fault divorce, abortion, etc are other problems too. Is there any studies out there that break the couples down by relationship to each other too or not? There's plenty of data that shows that a bad relationship between mom and dad, negatively will affect children too. Therefore bringing down the entire 'same sex' side of the argument. Now, did they further break things down by parent relationship or not?

    As I wrote, either offer substantial critiques of the relevant studies, offer something other than the Regnarus study to support your contention, or don't. My limited patience for inane projection has run dry, otherwise, and it's back to work for me.
    Projection AKA "HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE WITH ME!"

    Sorry Sam, but I went to college too and I know how to attack your claims and arguments. Did your precious study break down the couples into their relationships or not? Yes or no? I would love to see you give an answer to this or you can call me a bunch of names and show you're passive aggressive nature towards anybody who dares to question you. Your choice.
    "The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
    GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy

    Comment


    • Originally posted by lilpixieofterror View Post
      Of course they are right because in your little mind:

      liberal = true and infallible
      conservative = wrong and evil

      and nothing will ever change it. Your dodge is noted though. Did they include the relationship between parents or not? Since it seems they didn't (your dodge shows that much) you're attacking a pile of burning straw. See, the argument I actually hold to is that gay marriage is just one problem, among many. No fault divorce, abortion, etc are other problems too. Is there any studies out there that break the couples down by relationship to each other too or not? There's plenty of data that shows that a bad relationship between mom and dad, negatively will affect children too. Therefore bringing down the entire 'same sex' side of the argument. Now, did they further break things down by parent relationship or not?



      Projection AKA "HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE WITH ME!"

      Sorry Sam, but I went to college too and I know how to attack your claims and arguments. Did your precious study break down the couples into their relationships or not? Yes or no? I would love to see you give an answer to this or you can call me a bunch of names and show you're passive aggressive nature towards anybody who dares to question you. Your choice.
      One of the first things I learned in college was to do the reading or risk looking silly (I found a clever way around this, though: enroll in philosophy courses). You certainly can't "poke holes" in numerous sociological studies by assuming that they didn't look at such basic measures as family stability. As I discussed extensively last time on this board that I actually tried to handle this discussion citing the studies, family stability was found to be a primary factor in the development of children, whether of same-sex couples or opposite-sex couples, and children of same-sex couples were found to be no more or less developmentally susceptible to disruptions in family stability.

      So your problem isn't that you've found a gaping hole in the studies. It's that you have invented a reason not to even bother looking at the studies in the first place (because obviously they probably didn't account for family stability) and subsequently imagined that you were making a great point when even looking at a few relevant abstracts could have steered you away from this shipwreck of a post:

      Source: Child Well-Being in Same-Sex Parent Families: Review of Research Prepared for American Sociological Association Amicus Brief. Wendy D. Manning, Marshal Neal Fettro, Esther Lamidi. Population Research and Policy Review. August 2014, Volume 33, Issue 4, pp 485-502



      This article includes our assessment of the literature, focusing on those studies, reviews and books published within the past decade. We conclude that there is a clear consensus in the social science literature indicating that American children living within same-sex parent households fare just, as well as those children residing within different-sex parent households over a wide array of well-being measures: academic performance, cognitive development, social development, psychological health, early sexual activity, and substance abuse. Our assessment of the literature is based on credible and methodologically sound studies that compare well-being outcomes of children residing within same-sex and different-sex parent families. Differences that exist in child well-being are largely due to socioeconomic circumstances and family stability. We discuss challenges and opportunities for new research on the well-being of children in same-sex parent families.

      © Copyright Original Source



      Emphasis added.

      At least I should be thankful that this compelled me to find a new meta-review that hadn't existed the last time I went looking for 'em.
      "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Sam View Post
        People are a collection of data sets. That doesn't diminish a person's individual experience but no one in her right mind would argue that important human emotions and activities can not be reduced to data sets. That's why Google and Facebook are worth billions of dollars.
        ... do you actually believe that?
        Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
          ... do you actually believe that?
          Of course! It's entirely true. I am me and contain a veritable universe, in all its ordered and chaotic glory. People are individuals, each unique and majestic. But I am also a collection of observable, quantifiable data — an observing being with enough capacity can know most everything about me down to a very granular level. It's why Google probably knows you better than you know yourself and it's why psychological profiles based on Facebook data are worth so much to advertisers — people are collections of data and acknowledging that fact in no way diminishes them. In truth, it allows us to understand them (as individuals and collectives) in much better detail, allowing us to, in turn, develop better ways of interacting with others and governing. It's just an inevitable byproduct of existing in a material universe.

          My ability to interact with others became so much better after discovering MBTI. Night and day.
          "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Sam View Post
            Of course! It's entirely true. I am me and contain a veritable universe, in all its ordered and chaotic glory. People are individuals, each unique and majestic. But I am also a collection of observable, quantifiable data — an observing being with enough capacity can know most everything about me down to a very granular level. It's why Google probably knows you better than you know yourself and it's why psychological profiles based on Facebook data are worth so much to advertisers — people are collections of data and acknowledging that fact in no way diminishes them. In truth, it allows us to understand them (as individuals and collectives) in much better detail, allowing us to, in turn, develop better ways of interacting with others and governing. It's just an inevitable byproduct of existing in a material universe.

            My ability to interact with others became so much better after discovering MBTI. Night and day.
            Google, Facebook, Youtube, even Amazon are pretty bad at figuring out what sorts of things to recommend to me.

            Data points can describe a person, but they cannot capture a person. You can't reduce a person to a set of data points. Maybe this is semantics... or maybe I'm just a very special snowflake.
            Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
              Google, Facebook, Youtube, even Amazon are pretty bad at figuring out what sorts of things to recommend to me.

              Data points can describe a person, but they cannot capture a person. You can't reduce a person to a set of data points. Maybe this is semantics... or maybe I'm just a very special snowflake.
              Well, let me be clear that I'm not advocating a reductionist philosophy like material behaviorism. What I'm saying is that much of what a person is can be captured and expressed through data, which can then be accurately interpreted with the correct tools. This is, I believe, entirely uncontroversial at this point in history: we can and do collect and use troves of personal data to establish trends, group behavior, sociological conclusions, etc. Our modern economy is very much dependent on behavioral science.

              So the idea that we can't learn about people by appealing to empirical sociological data strikes me as silly. The idea that we can't learn about the developmental maturity of sets of individuals by measuring the developmental maturity of those individuals strikes me as silly enough to be almost self-refuting. It's at that point where pointing out that people are, in fact, collections of data, seems bizarrely necessary.
              "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Sam View Post
                Articles by children of same-sex couples are anecdotal evidence, not empirical evidence. One might as easily say that because children of opposite-sex couples write articles detailing poor childhoods that equates to empirical evidence that opposite-sex couples do a poorer job of rearing children.

                Of course that would be crazy, which is why we don't rely on anecdotal evidence.
                [nitpick] While I agree with your comments about the unreliability of anecdotal evidence, you're using the word 'empirical' wrong here. Anecdotal evidence is empirical, just a really poor type of empirical evidence. The category you should contrast it with is 'scientific evidence', or possibly simply 'reliable evidence'. [/nitpick]
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  [nitpick] While I agree with your comments about the unreliability of anecdotal evidence, you're using the word 'empirical' wrong here. Anecdotal evidence is empirical, just a really poor type of empirical evidence. The category you should contrast it with is 'scientific evidence', or possibly simply 'reliable evidence'. [/nitpick]
                  I recognize the technical accuracy of your point, though I resolve to continue using the terms "anecdotal" and "empirical" as a way to separate two distinct categories of evidence. "Scientific" and "Reliable" fail to capture the rhetorical expression conveyed by "empirical", in my opinion. At least around my geographic region, "empirical" conveys that expression of methodological, repeatable, and thus reliable knowledge.

                  So, yeah ... "Scientific" would be more accurately capturing what I'm trying to convey but I'm old and set in my ways
                  "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Bill the Cat View Post
                    Tolerant and accepting of perversion... but just as bigoted and judgmental of those who have a different opinion.
                    “Perversion” only for the adherents of certain Bronze Age deities, e.g. Allah, but it’s not a “perversion” according to every psychiatric association and related discipline worldwide. But what would they know; the great sky-god has spoken.
                    “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Sam View Post
                      At least around my geographic region, "empirical" conveys that expression of methodological, repeatable, and thus reliable knowledge.
                      I've found myself using the word 'empirical' a lot on these boards as the opposite to 'philosophical' or 'faith-based'. A lot of people on these boards seem happy to sit in their armchairs and imagine something to be true because it sounds right to them. So I find myself over and over again having to emphasize in response the importance of empirical approaches in the sense of actually looking at the world and actually basing one's views on reality and evidence rather than imagination and flights of fancy.

                      Because on these boards if the conversation is not conducted with reference to some sort of external verifiable evidence then the whole conversation goes nowhere, since person 1 says "I think X" and person 2 says "I think Y". If there is no step where we look at the world, and conclude that the evidence actually supports one position and disproves the other, then the discussion goes nowhere. (Of course, various hard-headed posters here don't tend to let mere things like facts or evidence affect their opinions, but that is a different issue)
                      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Sam View Post
                        Sociological studies, while products of a "soft" science, are far more preferable and reliable to anecdote, which is what you were offering in return. And the position of the American Sociological Association remains that sociological studies clearly show that children of same-sex partners are developmentally on par with children of opposite-sex partners. The only study I remember being offered to counter this consensus of studies was the Regnarus (spelling?) study, which was so poorly done that it would count Ted Haggard's kids as "children of a same-sex couple".

                        Show the studies that support your position or don't, it's no concern of mine. I'll respond to meritorious criticism and intelligent dissent; I have limited patience for poorly-constructed projection.
                        Can you define what you mean by developmentally? There have been a number of studies that have shown that, at the very least, there may be an affect on the sexual development of children raised by gay parents. I mentioned a few studies to Starlight in another thread some while back, after he made the claim that there was "no evidence suggesting parenting or early childhood experiences play any role in the development of sexuality". After pointing these out, he sorta backpedaled and explained that there have been a lot of studies done, and that it's all very complicated, but that the APA and the AMA more or less have the final word on the subject (or at least...that's what I got out of his reply).

                        http://factsaboutyouth.com/wp-conten...itself2010.pdf
                        http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/20...uckner_ajs.pdf
                        http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...10440X06000952
                        http://journals.cambridge.org/action...2193200502674X
                        http://link.springer.com/article/10....A1010243318426
                        http://link.springer.com/article/10....508-008-9449-3

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Adrift View Post
                          Can you define what you mean by developmentally? There have been a number of studies that have shown that, at the very least, there may be an affect on the sexual development of children raised by gay parents. I mentioned a few studies to Starlight in another thread some while back, after he made the claim that there was "no evidence suggesting parenting or early childhood experiences play any role in the development of sexuality". After pointing these out, he sorta backpedaled and explained that there have been a lot of studies done, and that it's all very complicated, but that the APA and the AMA more or less have the final word on the subject (or at least...that's what I got out of his reply).

                          http://factsaboutyouth.com/wp-conten...itself2010.pdf
                          http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/20...uckner_ajs.pdf
                          http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...10440X06000952
                          http://journals.cambridge.org/action...2193200502674X
                          http://link.springer.com/article/10....A1010243318426
                          http://link.springer.com/article/10....508-008-9449-3

                          Regarding sexual development, I would include measures pertaining to sexual activity or sexual risk-taking but not measures pertaining to sexual orientation or tolerance of non-normative sexual preferences. On the broader question, I think the abstract I cited listed the primary measures of development:

                          Source: Ibid



                          We conclude that there is a clear consensus in the social science literature indicating that American children living within same-sex parent households fare just, as well as those children residing within different-sex parent households over a wide array of well-being measures: academic performance, cognitive development, social development, psychological health, early sexual activity, and substance abuse. Our assessment of the literature is based on credible and methodologically sound studies that compare well-being outcomes of children residing within same-sex and different-sex parent families.

                          © Copyright Original Source



                          Emphasis added.
                          "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Sam View Post

                            Source: Child Well-Being in Same-Sex Parent Families: Review of Research Prepared for American Sociological Association Amicus Brief. Wendy D. Manning, Marshal Neal Fettro, Esther Lamidi. Population Research and Policy Review. August 2014, Volume 33, Issue 4, pp 485-502



                            This article includes our assessment of the literature, focusing on those studies, reviews and books published within the past decade. We conclude that there is a clear consensus in the social science literature indicating that American children living within same-sex parent households fare just, as well as those children residing within different-sex parent households over a wide array of well-being measures: academic performance, cognitive development, social development, psychological health, early sexual activity, and substance abuse. Our assessment of the literature is based on credible and methodologically sound studies that compare well-being outcomes of children residing within same-sex and different-sex parent families. Differences that exist in child well-being are largely due to socioeconomic circumstances and family stability. We discuss challenges and opportunities for new research on the well-being of children in same-sex parent families.

                            © Copyright Original Source



                            The same study notes that using nationally representative standards are the "gold standard", but that
                            convenience or snowball samples are more common in the literature, and the most widely used data source is the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS). The NLLFS is based on interviews with donor-inseminated lesbian mothers five times from insemination or pregnancy to the child’s 17th birthday (e.g., Gartell and Bos 2010; Goldberg et al. 2011; van Gelderen et al. 2012a) and since 2002, 15 studies used these data. This recruitment strategy is considered acceptable given that few national surveys are large enough to include many children raised by same-sex parents. Relying on convenience samples means that the same-sex parents within these studies are not representative of all same-sex parents and represent only those who were targeted and agreed to participate, perhaps selective of the most highly functioning families. Yet, this approach does provide key insights into a group that is challenging to capture in large-scale surveys. At times, the findings from this sample are contrasted to results from a national sample of adolescents in the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) (Gartrell et al. 2012).

                            Let me know when most of the studies which support your case study samples that are a) in any way representative (ie. not based on such snowball sampling) therefore b) don't make unfair comparisons between the children from the best homosexual marriages and the average heterosexual marriages to arrive at the conclusion that there is no significant difference.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Sam View Post
                              But I am also a collection of observable, quantifiable data — an observing being with enough capacity can know most everything about me down to a very granular level. It's why Google probably knows you better than you know yourself


                              My ability to interact with others became so much better after discovering MBTI. Night and day.
                              Uggh. For the life of me, I can't understand why otherwise intelligent folk like yourself get suckered into type indicator tests like these. Its the modern day equivalent of a horoscope.

                              When asked how scientifically valid the test was, here's was the decent breakdown of it's issues from one of Reddit's askscience subs.


                              Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1p2cki/how_scientifically_valid_is_the_myers_briggs/

                              I am the lead psychometrician at a personality test publisher, so I will attempt to answer your question.

                              To begin, it is important to note that no test is "scientifically valid". Validity is not an element of a test, but specifically has to do with test score interpretation. (see the Standards for Educational and Psychological testing 1999, or Messick, 1989). That being said, the Myers Briggs is not a scientifically valid personality assessment. However, personality assessments can be validated for specific purposes.

                              Moving onto the bigger issue with the Myers-Briggs: Decision consistency. The Myers-Briggs proclaims a reliability (calculated using coefficient alpha) of between .75-.85 on all of its scales (see Myers-Briggs testing manual). These are general, industry standard reliability coefficients(indicating that if you were to retest, you would get a similar score, but not exact). However, the Myers-Briggs makes additional claims about bucketing individuals into 1 of 16 possible personality types. That you can shift up or down a few points if you were to retake the test on any of the four distinct scales means that you may be higher on one scale than another simply through retaking the test due to measurement error. In fact, literature shows that your personality type will change for 50% of individuals simply through retesting. (Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Brigg Type inventory, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and research, summer, 2005). This result indicates very low decision consistency. The low decision consistency is also a mathematical inevitability given 16 personality profiles using 4 scales and scale reliability around .8.

                              Given the low decision consistency, and given that claims the Myers-Briggs makes about about your personality(validity information) depends on the decisions made by the test to be consistent and not subject to change simply based on retesting, it is highly unlikely that there can be a solid validity argument supporting the Myers-Briggs as a personality indicator. Maybe there are studies showing that it can be used in a very specific context, but sweeping generalizations about the tests use are not going carry much weight.

                              Now, as a working professional in the field, the Myers-Briggs does NOT have a good reputation as being a decent assessment. It has marketed well to school systems and has good name recognizability, but it is not a well developed exam. There are much better personality assessments available, such as SHL's OPQ32 or The Hogan personality inventory. Now, I don't want to say any of these are good. The best correlations between job performance and personality assessments is about .3 (indicating about 9% of the variance in a persons job performance can be accounted for by a personality assessment). That is the BEST personality assessments can do in terms of job performance... and a correlation of .3 is not worth very much (considering that tests like ACT or the SAT can correlate upwards of .7 with first year college GPA under ideal circumstances).

                              Expanding on this, the Myers-Brigg's is not only psychometrically unreliable, it is neither a psychometrically valid nor a theoretically validated assessment of personality. It posits a very distinct structure of personality. We know from Popper's (1934) original argument that the more specific a hypothesis, the easier it is to falsify. This is very much so in Myers-Brigg's case. The process in validating an assessment includes a number of statistical and methodological techniques that include assessing construct, content, discriminant, and convergent validities. Below are several links that reveal the shortcomings in the Myers-Brigg's in attempting to achieve this level of psychometric validity:

                              * Factor analysis procedures are not consistent, questioning it's construct validity

                              * Concerns about the utility of the test, more validity problems

                              * Item construction issues

                              * Doesn't map onto the Big 5, an extremely well-validated personality assessment

                              * "Routine use of the MBTI is not recommended" More validity and reliability issues.

                              I was actually surprised at how difficult it was to find any psychometic testing on the MBTI. The reason being that academia has long since abandoned it for other better assessments.

                              © Copyright Original Source

                              Last edited by Adrift; 05-27-2015, 01:04 AM.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Paprika View Post


                                The same study notes that using nationally representative standards are the "gold standard", but that
                                convenience or snowball samples are more common in the literature, and the most widely used data source is the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS). The NLLFS is based on interviews with donor-inseminated lesbian mothers five times from insemination or pregnancy to the child’s 17th birthday (e.g., Gartell and Bos 2010; Goldberg et al. 2011; van Gelderen et al. 2012a) and since 2002, 15 studies used these data. This recruitment strategy is considered acceptable given that few national surveys are large enough to include many children raised by same-sex parents. Relying on convenience samples means that the same-sex parents within these studies are not representative of all same-sex parents and represent only those who were targeted and agreed to participate, perhaps selective of the most highly functioning families. Yet, this approach does provide key insights into a group that is challenging to capture in large-scale surveys. At times, the findings from this sample are contrasted to results from a national sample of adolescents in the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) (Gartrell et al. 2012).

                                Let me know when most of the studies which support your case study samples that are a) in any way representative (ie. not based on such snowball sampling) therefore b) don't make unfair comparisons between the children from the best homosexual marriages and the average heterosexual marriages to arrive at the conclusion that there is no significant difference.

                                You omitted the sentences above:

                                Source: Ibid



                                The four nationally representative data sets include the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), New Family Structures Study (NFSS), and U.S. Census data. Each data source reflects family experiences across a unique time period. For example, the ECLS-K is a cohort designed to represent the experiences of children who were in kindergarten and first grade in 1999 and 2000 and mid-adolescents in 2010. The Add Health references the experiences of teenagers (12–18) during the mid-1990s. The Census presents the living circumstances of school-age children in 2000. The NFSS is not specific to an age group or time frame, and it is challenging to assess a broad spectrum of ages and time periods. New data collections that reflect the current social, legal, and political environments are merited.

                                © Copyright Original Source



                                And, reading further, the authors do note the results of studies dealing with those nationally representative data sets. So it already is possible to draw conclusions from nationally representative data sets and determine whether they are congruent with studies drawing from NLLFS.
                                "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

                                Comment

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