Posted by Jay Livingston
As someone with the visual aptitude of gravel, I shouldn’t be edging into Flâneuse territory. But when I saw this graph in USA Today this morning, I was frustrated.
(Click on the image for a larger view.)Responses, by age group, when asked if they want to marry:
SOURCES: Match.com/MarketTools survey of 5,199 men and women who either have never been married or are widowed, divorced or separated.
I found it hard to make comparisons from one age group to another. In the online edition, the layout was better – all in a row – and the addition of even a single color helped. (Odd that USA Today, the newspaper that led the way in using color, gave its print readers the graph in only black-and-white, or more accurately gray-and-gray.)
(Click on the image for a larger view.)I thought I’d try my own hand with my rudimentary knowledge of Excel.
(Click on the image for a larger view.)What do you think?
the most important word in the original graph is "singles." the graphs imply that people lose interest in marriage as they age but it's more likely that by middle-age most of the matrimonially-inclined have gotten hitched and thus are censored from the graph. a better set of graphs would have made explicit and conspicuous how censorship works by age group -- i'd bet that most of the "yes" in early age groups shifts to "already married" rather than "no desire to get married or unsure"
ReplyDeleteThat certainly seems likely. It would be interesting if there were s longitudinal cohort study to see if the 9% "no" people in the youngest group become the 18% of "nos" in the next older group. The way they present the data gives the impression that young unmarried "yeses" became older unmarried "nos." From the data in the graph, it's impossible to know. Match.com does not make the original data easy to find nor do they say anything about the age distribution of the sample. I suppose you could get census data on marriage rates by age group and use that instead to get a rough guess.
ReplyDeleteDivided bar graphs are ideal for this kind of comparison. Unfortunately, they are not often used in the public media. But if someone brought them to the attention to people like the editors of "USA Today", they might catch on. Nothing wrong with blogging about them, but it might be more useful to bring them to the attention of someone who can make a difference.
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