I have read through the grooming report from the Home Office.
Here, in this thread, I will take you through the mathematical hoops they have jumped through in this deeply flawed analysis.
Thread 👇
One way to force a conclusion is to only range over a small and carefully chosen set of data points. In this case, the report used a limited number of use cases which largely ignored the high profile grooming gangs of Pakistani origin.
A typical data trick is to only use one troublesome dataset - generally the most high profile one. This gives plausible denial on accusations of manipulation of source data.
A tautology is a statement which is true by virtue of its logical form. I.e. a statement which is inevitably true. Such statements are not worth declaring as they have no statistical significance.
In a broadly white country, this statement is tautological. The real question is, were other groups present in a statistical significant way?
The whole point of data analysis is to uncover statistically significance results - not to restate tautologies.
This trick does, however, produce lovely quotable headlines which will reassure people of their own anecdotal conclusions.
_This is what we call “the pericope trick”_
Whenever you don’t want to use a data item, you can just blame data quality. In this case, they often cited data quality on ethnicity classifications.
The UK ethnicity enumeration is flawed in many areas.
In any given set of statements, there will be a range of values. Each item in the range will then have a corresponding frequency count. So some items might be present once and others hundreds of times.
_This is what we call “the range trick”_
A final trick I will mention is to mix-up the definition of data types and classes. You can, for example, deliberately use nationality in place of ethnicity when it suits your cause.
_This is what we call “the predicate trick”_
More from Economy
In this paper, we study vote choices of voters who are left-wing on economic issues and authoritarian/nationalist on cultural issues, especially immigration. For these voters, there is no often party combining positions in this way.
In the data from the Campaign Panel of the German Election Study 2017, many voters prefer higher social benefits and taxes and want to restrict immigration. @ches_data show that no party bundles issue positions in this way.
In the article, we show that many such “left-authoritarians” perceive the party they voted for to also hold a left-authoritarian position. Interestingly, this includes many AfD voters who report a perceived left-wing economic position of the party.
Our statistical models study the interplay between this (mis-)perceived congruence and issue importance, using an open-ended question on the most important political problem in Germany.
We find that (mis-)perceived congruence and issue importance interactively shape the left-authoritarian vote. Simply, perceived congruence matters more on an important issue—and issue salience matters most if voters accurately perceive incongruent party supply.
Vol 70 Apr | '#Vote choices of left-#authoritarians: Misperceived congruence and issue #salience' by @NilsSteiner and Sven Hillen is now available @ches_data @german_gles #Germany https://t.co/pmCoP5t7CL pic.twitter.com/Vl8rCahcZL
— Electoral Studies (@ElectoralStdies) January 30, 2021
In the data from the Campaign Panel of the German Election Study 2017, many voters prefer higher social benefits and taxes and want to restrict immigration. @ches_data show that no party bundles issue positions in this way.
In the article, we show that many such “left-authoritarians” perceive the party they voted for to also hold a left-authoritarian position. Interestingly, this includes many AfD voters who report a perceived left-wing economic position of the party.
Our statistical models study the interplay between this (mis-)perceived congruence and issue importance, using an open-ended question on the most important political problem in Germany.
We find that (mis-)perceived congruence and issue importance interactively shape the left-authoritarian vote. Simply, perceived congruence matters more on an important issue—and issue salience matters most if voters accurately perceive incongruent party supply.