Does boys' mischief surpass girls'?

[koganbot]

Reposting this from Tumblr, where Tom Ewing links a piece at NPR by Amy Kamenetz. Here are Tom's comments (though I'm not sure whom he's quoting at the start) and underneath them my own speculation:

If kids report that they’re transgender and have one leg and belong to a gang and have several children … take it with a grain of salt.
This is a good

Comments

Boys, Girls, re Mischief

[anonymous]

"Whereas you could trust a girl's response much more, that she listened to what she said she did, that she bought the advertised products she said she did." How did they know the boys were lying? Judging by "hostile, defensive" manner?

"(But from reading your posts over the years I wouldn't be surprised if you were to tell me that the reliability of girls' responses is only relatively better, that there are all sorts of reasons that even sincere responses can't be trusted..." Including wistful thinking, perhaps? What you'd *love* to buy... don allred

Re: Boys, Girls, re Mischief

[koganbot]

Don, I don't know on what basis researchers decided that boys were less likely to tell the truth, if the evidence was anecdotal or systematic or what. I assume it was way more than just a hostile defensive manner, but that doesn't mean researchers were able to conduct controlled, definitive experiments. Maybe there are ways to follow up the behavior of people who participate in focus groups. Tom Ewing would be the one to ask.

But market researchers have been wrestling with such questions for years. After all, if their results don't predict anything about consumer behavior, market research doesn't have a product to sell.

[dubdobdee]

(consider this the levite passing by on the other side)

(for testing purposes: obvs i have an LJ account so maybe slip past the cyberguardians anyway)

[koganbot]

In fact, the notifications are indeed working now. Thank you.

from Bob Le Flaneur re Mischief and Boys

[anonymous]

Well Barack Obama arrived in Brussels today, and just one hour ago I had lunch with him.

He said to me, "Bob, tell me, what should I do about Putin?"

I said to him, "Listen, the only thing that this Putin guy is really afraid of is HOMOSEXUALS. Therefore, you should send THOUSANDS OF HOMOSEXUALS to the Crimea. And remember to give them plenty of suntan oil -- this time of year you'll NEVER get them off those beaches!"

[skyecaptain]

Found a pretty good academic overview of "mischievous" survey responders (the study calls them "jokesters") but AFAICT no discussion of gender. They point to several banner discussions of jokesters that may reference gender, though I'll bet those studies (about adoption, citizenship, and disability) don't have much to say about why any gender disparities operate the way they do, as these seem to be artifacts of surveying rather than the point of the studies. The big idea, as far as I read anyway, is merely that very large studies of uncontroversial questions don't lead to much mischief, but for very specific populations AND very unique questions, there's a good chance that trolling messes with results.

[skyecaptain]

Fwded to your email. (And let me know if you get a notification for the comments.)

[skyecaptain]

Yes, notification came through, as obviously did your post itself. Oddly enough, your email hasn't. And I'm posting this without logging in to see if this makes it too. (Note to lurkers; there's been some spottiness as to whether or not I get email notifications from lj, the problem being not with lj, as far as I can tell, but with my ISP. So I've been asking friends to post comments, both under their lj moniker or anonymously. Lurkers are encouraged to do so too. This is all really a back-handed attempt to move koganbot into lj's top 6,000 blogs.)

My memory of the Billboard piece is that mischief wasn't mentioned; the problem was a combination of boys being afraid or unwilling to tell the truth and their not knowing their truth. I don't recall the article going into much detail. I'd speculate that it's more natural for boys to feel they need to put on a show, to impress someone or to deflect attack - even from an anonymous phone interviewer. Of course, mischief fits right into this, assuming it's true.

[arbitrary_greay]

Insofar as the accuracy of surveying students about their pop culture preferences, this article I dug up years ago is relevant:
Kyoko Koizumi. "Popular Music, Gender and High School Pupils in Japan: Personal Music in School and Leisure Sites". Popular Music, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 107-125
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853589

Both in private and when interviewed with others, boys tended to state more personal choices, but when questioned for reasons for their choices, used all sorts of hipster rationalization tricks to make them more artistically acceptable.

If interviewed with others, girls stuck to socially acceptable (already popular) choices, but didn't try to dress up the more personal choices given if interviewed in private.