Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Careful With Those Studies:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118090462
[1]Dr. Jay Gordon (Huffington Post) discusses a recent study:
Nearly every one of 253 adults asked said that their doctors should
ask them about family stress and conflict, even when that conflict
extended to violence.
In contrast, only about a third of these people said that their
doctors actually did inquire about these crucial aspects of
physical and emotional well-being.
And indeed the [2]summary he links to reports:
In a survey of 253 male and female patients, nearly all (97
percent) believed physicians should ask patients about family
stress and conflict, and most (94 percent) thought physicians could
be helpful.
Despite this, only one third of the respondents remembered ever
being asked about family conflict by their physicians.
But if you look closely at the [3]study itself, and in particular
[4]table 1, you see that 67% of respondents said that family doctors
should "sometimes" ask about family conflict, and only 29% said that
doctors should "often" ask about this. This suggests that there may
not be much "contrast" there: 67% of respondents think that the doctor
should only ask about this sometimes -- presumably under certain
circumstances, though each respondent may have a different view of
what those circumstances might be. Many doctors might well take a
similar view, and simply conclude in many cases (whether rightly or
wrongly) that this particular patient's circumstances don't justify
such an inquiry.
If the summary carries an implicit claim that doctors are being too
reticent, and aren't doing what patients really want them to do (which
is how I read the summary and Dr. Gordon's reference to it), such a
claim doesn't really seem to be supported by the facts. The claim may
still be right, but this study just doesn't really support it.
Nothing earth-shaking, I realize; if people misread this study, we're
not going to see [5]a disaster of Biblical proportions. But it is, I
think, yet another a reminder to be careful about summaries of
studies, which often omit qualifiers (e.g., "sometimes") that are
quite important.
References
1.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jay-gordon/narrowcast-medical-note-t_1939.html
2. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=25402
3. http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/full/3/3/248
4. http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/full/3/3/248/T1
5. http://www.moviesounds.com/ghostbusters.html
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