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In Reply to: Re: Premature and accidental death posted by Observer on June 21, 2006 at 19:03:05:
My obseravations are based on a typical sampling, but NOT a random sampling. My observations are based on what is called (in the research biz) a "convience" sample, e.g, that which is immediately at hand. Convenience samples about suicide are not to be dismissed, however, because they are indeed based on what is typical. My observations are one of several samples that would show up in a more rigorly designed "random" sampling of the population known as a Systemite cohort of young adults or children of Boomers.
The point is this: Suicide has an EXTREMELY low incidence rate in the general population of Systemites children of Boomers born after 1969. This means that in any number of random samples you might draw from Systemites aged 37 or younger, you'd find NO experience/awareness/first-hand knowledge of a peer who knew someone who had suicided. Yes, there would be a few samples who reported the incidence of a suicide in their peer groups, but that would be VERY FEW. However, the Family-ite SGA sample aged 37 or younger would contain an extremely high number of suicides in their peer group and very few samples that reported NO suicides.
This is because suicide rates in the general population of Systemites are extremely low. That fact is something that the SGAs who have argued with me about methodolgy don't yet appear to understand. Because the rates are so EXTREMELY low, you can validly compare suicide rates in the general population per year to the suicide rate of SGAs as a special population over a period of time, such as 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 years.
The bottom line is this: The death rate among SGAs pisses me off, because I KNOW as both a statistician with training in epidemiology and as a human being with common sense and a conscience that the death rate (reported ancecdotally) among SGAs is totally f*cked up when compared to their Systemite peers.
