{"id":52764,"date":"2013-01-12T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T18:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=52764"},"modified":"2017-09-17T08:24:37","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T13:24:37","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-control-for-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/01\/12\/what-does-it-mean-to-control-for-something\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does it Mean to “Control For” Something?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Advanced quantitative analysis often controls for variables that aren’t of central interest. But what does it mean to “control for” a variable? \u00a0XKCD<\/a> offers a fun example.<\/p>\n

So, do subscribers to Martha Stewart Living<\/em> live alongside furries? \u00a0Probably not. In any case, these maps don’t offer any evidence in favor of this conclusion. \u00a0This is because of a variable that hasn’t been controlled for: population density.<\/p>\n

To control for population, one would have to divide the number of subscribers\/furries by the total population. \u00a0This would give us the percentage<\/em> of the population that is described by both proclivities, instead of the sheer number of devotees. \u00a0Then the maps would actually show variance in the proportion of the population instead of variance in the population itself.<\/p>\n

In other words, we would have controlled for population in order to get a closer look at what we’re really interested in: furries, of course.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advanced quantitative analysis often controls for variables that aren’t of central interest. But what does it mean to “control for” a variable? \u00a0XKCD offers a fun example. So, do subscribers to Martha Stewart Living live alongside furries? \u00a0Probably not. In any case, these maps don’t offer any evidence in favor of this conclusion. \u00a0This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[274],"class_list":["post-52764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-methodsuse-of-data"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52764"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71353,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52764\/revisions\/71353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}