Andrew Sullivan links to Maureen O'Connor (link) who picked up on Netflix's recent advertising pitch mischievously titled "Netflix adultery". Andrew highlighted this statistical result, with Maureen's interpretation, supposedly sourced from Netflix although I wasn't able to find the actual study. (I added the emphasis.)
In a study of 2000 American adults, 12 percent confessed to watching ahead on TV shows they were supposed to save to watch with their partners. Ten percent admitted to being the victim of Netflix adultery, which means either 2 percent are blissfully unaware of their partners’ indiscretions, or the cheaters are hitting multiple victims.
This last sentence is "story time". There is nothing in the study to prove or disprove this story. A third explanation -- which is more likely than the other two -- is that the 2 percent difference is pure noise. The margin of error of this study is about 1.3 percent plus or minus around each of those percentages.
The conclusion also contains a number of suspicious elements. First, it's unclear how exactly 2000 people responded. Second, not all adults have partners so either the 2000 people were pre-screened and not just any adult, or the percentages are biased by unattached people who could not have cheated.
Thirdly, Maureen made an assumption that both partners of each couple responded, which is highly unlikely. There are really eight types of couples: both cheated, which leads to four types depending on whether each partner confessed to the other; the first partner cheated or the second partner cheated, each of which leads to two types depending on whether there was a confession. Each couple may have returned one or two surveys. Given such complexity, the two percentages from the survey cannot be simply interpreted.
Finally, Netflix should disclose how the sample was selected.
Maybe their advertising agency just made it up. Well, it wouldn't really matter if it wasn't true.
Posted by: Ken | 05/24/2013 at 05:42 AM