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To: bdeaner
If you believe that drug use is declining, you are very naive. What is happening is that teenagers are becoming wise to the stupid polls. One of the high schools in my county (a rural area of WA State) numbered in the highest percentage of drug use in the country and the public school where I live (a border town, where almost 95% of the kids really do use drugs) was recorded as one of the lowest. Kids have just wised up to the stupid polls.
7 posted on 12/23/2003 10:55:26 PM PST by Eva
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To: Eva
If you believe that drug use is declining, you are very naive. What is happening is that teenagers are becoming wise to the stupid polls. One of the high schools in my county (a rural area of WA State) numbered in the highest percentage of drug use in the country and the public school where I live (a border town, where almost 95% of the kids really do use drugs) was recorded as one of the lowest. Kids have just wised up to the stupid polls.

That's your anecdotal evidence against actual, empirical evidence. Certainly, demand characteristics are always an issue with surveys, and therefore always a potential confounding variable. But, even if the kids are 'wising up to the polls,' as you claim, why didn't kids 'wise up' to them in the past? What these surveys claim is that there is a difference between survey data today compared to the past -- but kids in the past, I would assume, were just as likely to be subject to the same kinds of demand characreristics in these polls. That in itself would eliminate the confound, acting as a control mechanism, that validates these findings -- if not the actual numbers, at least the difference between cohorts. In short, there is more reason to believe the meaning of the results (that there is a real difference) than there is to doubt them. So, no, I'm not naive.
8 posted on 12/23/2003 11:07:34 PM PST by bdeaner
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To: Eva
Why in the world would they do that in your wise opinion?

Personally, I have found teenagers to be proud of their "rebellious acts". They are usually more than willing to brag about this sort of thing. Especially with the anonymity that polls provide.

So, what would they have to gain by altering the poll results?
21 posted on 12/24/2003 1:21:30 AM PST by texasflower (in the event of the rapture.......the Bush White House will be unmanned)
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