tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post8904473817149194077..comments2024-03-13T20:44:25.984+01:00Comments on Nick Brown's blog: Cornell salutes America's teenage female combat heroes of WW2Nick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00172030184497186082noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-68441177895621453632017-03-29T00:50:37.836+02:002017-03-29T00:50:37.836+02:00I was also puzzled by the reference to Army servic...I was also puzzled by the reference to Army service. My father fought as a Marine all the way from Guadalcanal [as an 18-year-old] through the end of the war in the South Pacific. Until late in the war there were no or few Army combatants there.<br />Also an uncle got his mother to lie on his papers and he got in at age 15 to the Seabees in early 1944. He died in the early 90s, but would have only been 74 in 2000.<br />Anyway, that paper is a mess.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-39738860365450987872017-03-23T12:47:30.695+01:002017-03-23T12:47:30.695+01:00You might want to add Wansink & Wansink (2013)...You might want to add <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23760855" rel="nofollow">Wansink & Wansink (2013)</a> to the comparison, as it includes the same description of the Survey (7500 surveys sent out to only WWII veterans; 3188 undeliverable, 1123 responses, 25.6% or 43% response rate).<br /><br />Relevant responses are divided into No Combat (N = 203), Light combat (132) and Heavy combat (210), 545 in total. This is a relatively small disagreement with the Frontiers paper, which ignores the No Combat group, somehow leaving 355 -- “120 of them had experienced a light combat and 235 of them had experienced heavy combat”.<br /><br />It does not fit so well with the 2008 paper, which only looked at the "Heavy and frequent" group, where N=<b>526</b>. <br /><br />This could be explained by omitting different individuals from different studies depending on what relevant subsidiary questions have been answered, but it does leave open any number of forking pathways.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-20069207453285540632017-03-20T21:29:50.846+01:002017-03-20T21:29:50.846+01:00I totally agree with your final point, of course. ...I totally agree with your final point, of course. No one is supposed to dig that info up.<br /><br />I just wanted to highlight where any assumptions we may make might be biased. So, for instance, I believe that boys as young as 15 did participate in heavy fighting. That was the situation in other armies. <br /><br />Also, there was another reply to that tweet that mentioned that many women did participate in fighting, especially at Pearl Harbor. Nivnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-90399926412656425462017-03-18T04:30:03.541+01:002017-03-18T04:30:03.541+01:002009:
To investigate this, a random selection of 5...2009:<br /><i>To investigate this, a random selection of 5000 veterans born before 1928 were obtained from census data.</i> <br />2012:<br /><i>To solicit respondents, a random sample of [750] veteran addresses was obtained from census data.</i><br /><br />Do US census results really provide the name, address and age of every war veteran?Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-1030463275048042502017-03-18T01:57:01.590+01:002017-03-18T01:57:01.590+01:00@Smut Clyde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6SN...@Smut Clyde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6SNxNIV08Nick Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266307287741345798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-57115498665774522017-03-18T01:35:08.370+01:002017-03-18T01:35:08.370+01:00According to a 2009 account of the project, only 5...According to <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2474303" rel="nofollow">a 2009 account of the project</a>, only <b>5000</b> questionnaires were sent out:<br /><i>To investigate this, a random selection of 5000 veterans born before 1928 were obtained from census data. In the year 2000, each veteran was sent a survey, a cover letter, and a business reply return envelope (see Wansink, Payne, & van Ittersum, 2008).</i><br />2376 surveys were deliverable, and <b>493</b> responses were received.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-50523719295951217602017-03-17T17:10:15.047+01:002017-03-17T17:10:15.047+01:00@Neuroskeptic: I think that a reasonable interpret...@Neuroskeptic: I think that a reasonable interpretation of "72 that were returned by the late veteran’s spouse" is that the form came back with a nice cover letter saying "Thank you for sending this form; unfortunately, my husband(*) recently passed away". Even if the spouse filled out the form, she(*) must have indicated that it was her(*) doing so (unless they did something like testing the DNA from where the envelope was licked for Y chromosomes), at which point the data should have been discarded as not being the veteran's own description of his(*) experiences.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(*) Simplifying assumptions: Male combatant, female spouse.Nick Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266307287741345798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-72965723778435348592017-03-17T17:04:55.415+01:002017-03-17T17:04:55.415+01:00Regarding the possibility that the "female&qu...Regarding the possibility that the "female" respondants were widows, the paper says that<br /><br />"Of the 7,500 questionnaires that were initially mailed, 3188 were undeliverable (due to death), including 72 that were returned by the late veteran’s spouse."<br /><br />Interestingly, 19.7% of 120 = 23.6 and 20.7% of 235 = 48.645, total = 72.245<br /><br />So the number of female "soldiers" does add up to the number of widow's responses (to the nearest integer anyway).Neuroskeptichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06647064768789308157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-78001544878652731562017-03-17T12:47:53.696+01:002017-03-17T12:47:53.696+01:00In the 2012 account of the Survey, 750 veterans we...In the 2012 account of the Survey, 750 veterans were targeted -- including later wars, so those data are a superset of the present 7500 targets. 467 provided full responses, of whom 62.59% were combat veterans (Table 1), i.e. 229.3. <br />Of those combat veterans, 99.62% (228.4) were male, with a std.dev. of 6.19%. The same proportion were married.<br />http://bogan.dyson.cornell.edu/doc/research/COEP.pdfSmut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-743882084036138412017-03-17T10:51:29.532+01:002017-03-17T10:51:29.532+01:00Our study utilizes data from the 2000 University o...<i>Our study utilizes data from the 2000 University of Illinois Veteran Survey...<br />A random national sample of 7,500 World War II veterans was asked to complete a questionnaire about their experiences before, during, and after the war. ...<br />In all, a total of 1123 surveys (25.6%) from World War II veterans were received in a timely enough manner to be included in the study.</i><br /><br />Here is another description of the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7287.2012.00319.x/abstract" rel="nofollow">2000 Veteran's Survey</a>:<br /><i>In the year 2000, two waves of surveys were used to gather information on U.S. veterans. Wave 1 collected a random sample of 500 veteran respondents born before 1928. Wave 2 collected a random sample of 250 veteran respondents.</i><br /><br />Another version has <a href="http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/research/sports-work-anticipated-and-persistent-correlates-participation" rel="nofollow">931 participants in the study</a>.<br /><br />If you can find evidence that this ever-growing survey ever actually occurred, you are doing better than me.Smut Clydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09409476490132867809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-11850964864163056692017-03-16T18:47:03.683+01:002017-03-16T18:47:03.683+01:00@Niv:
In the article to which you linked, the aut...@Niv:<br /><br />In the article to which you linked, the authors stated that "we discarded the responses of ... 239 [respondents] who were age 17 or younger in 1945 since they would not have completed high school before the end of World War II". I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone who had not completed high school before the end of WW2 did not see heavy combat during that war. Similarly, in that linked article, the authors state that they *removed* the surveys filled in by the widows.<br /><br />That suggests to me that we can probably assume that when they decided go on a fishing expedition --- oops, sorry, a "deep data dive" --- a few years later, they will have been aware that some of the questionnaires might not have been filled in by actual combat veterans from WW2. Perhaps they could have clarified that for us in their method section, if they had *actually taken the time to write one* instead of copying it verbatim from a previous article.<br /><br />More generally, nobody should have to read another article to find out whether the reported demographics are correct or not. If the article says that their sample consisted of US combat veterans from WW2, it is not up to the reader to think, "Oh, well, if this were any other lab I'd believe what they wrote, but because this is the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and we know everything they produce is surrounded by a huge cloud of uncertainty, I'll just assume that what they meant was X and Y and Z", as if they deserve the benefit of the doubt for trying, like if an undergraduate brought their 6-year-old kid brother to class who insisted on doing all the assignments.Nick Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266307287741345798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-28239617123326452122017-03-16T15:20:06.293+01:002017-03-16T15:20:06.293+01:00The veteran database has been sliced many times, i...The veteran database has been sliced many times, it seems. I haven't looked up all of the papers, but in the attached paper they explicitly state that a subgroup of the sample were under 17 at enrollment. <br />http://leedr.dyson.cornell.edu/docs/SportsBiodataJLOSFinalMay7-2014.pdf<br /><br />Another curiosity of the data is that some widows filled the surveys for their late husbands. Any chance they might have used these data, resulting in the 20% women ratio?<br /><br />(Another option would be that their sample included non-US veterans; people who fought for Russia, Yugoslavia, some other eastern European countries, or even some volunteers for Britain. Women did fight under these flags in WW2. It seems unlikely to be represented in their sample, though)Nivnoreply@blogger.com