by Kaharz » Fri Jan 06, 2017 11:38 am
Yes, just that. Longitudinal studies on a sufficiently large group for something like that are incredibly expensive and often have issues due to drop out rates. They are done, but they aren't very common.
Even then there are so many uncontrolled variables you are probably only going to be able to make fairly broad or high level correlations for relationships without much ability to check if they are spurious or not, much less the actual strength of the relationship. So you might be able to say that children in single parent house holds do worse in school,* but you probably aren't going to be able to say with any definitiveness "your kid would have been smarter if you limited their TV time to one hour a day instead of two when they were between the ages of 2-5."
*And that could be more due to socio-economic class, parental supervision, bonding time, whatever and not actually be because there is only one parent.
Yes, just that. Longitudinal studies on a sufficiently large group for something like that are incredibly expensive and often have issues due to drop out rates. They are done, but they aren't very common.
Even then there are so many uncontrolled variables you are probably only going to be able to make fairly broad or high level correlations for relationships without much ability to check if they are spurious or not, much less the actual strength of the relationship. So you might be able to say that children in single parent house holds do worse in school,* but you probably aren't going to be able to say with any definitiveness "your kid would have been smarter if you limited their TV time to one hour a day instead of two when they were between the ages of 2-5."
*And that could be more due to socio-economic class, parental supervision, bonding time, whatever and not actually be because there is only one parent.