16 Secondary Reporting of Research
Textbook Chapters (or similar texts)
Popular Press Articles
Videos
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Inquiry-based Activity: The accuracy of weed reporting
Introduction: The media is an important conduit for scientific findings to reach the general public, with 54% of US adults getting their news information from media sources that cover a broad range of topics, as opposed to science-specific sources (data coming from the Pew Research Center). However, these studies are not always appropriately “translated” from the journals to the newspapers. In this activity, students will make comparisons between primary literature and media reporting that has been done on the study. They will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the media reporting, as well as possible motives for inaccurate reporting.
Question to pose to students: Begin by showing students a video that talks about a research study in a sensationalized way. For the purposes of demonstration, we will be talking about the NowThis video available here. This video covers Cuttler, C., Spradlin, A., Nusbaum, A.T., Whitney, P., Hinson, J.M., & McLaughlin, R.J. (2017). Blunted stress reactivity in chronic cannabis users. Psychopharmacology, 234 (15), 2299-2309. doi: 10.1007/s00213-017-4648-z , a study that examined the effects of chronic cannabis use on stress reactivity. While this video/paper combination works particularly well in this activity, any paper that has an accompanying sensational video will work fine.
Once students have viewed the video, have them get into pairs and ask them what they thought the original research study was about.
Students form a hypothesis: Based on the video, students discuss what they think the research question was, how the researchers tested their hypothesis, and what their conclusions were. It is often useful for students to actually sketch out the design of the study, including what the independent and dependent variable(s) were and how group assignment worked.
Students test their hypotheses: Have students read the methods and results of the source article (in this example, Cuttler et al., 2017). If time is short, it can also work to discuss the source article as a group. Compare how the video presents the study with how the study was actually conducted.
Do the students’ hypotheses hold up?: There is typically some overlap between what the student’s thought the research looked like and how the study was actually conducted. There are also typically several points of divergence. For example, in the video linked above, student’s often think there were some people who were diagnosed with anxiety who participated, or that the researchers looked at the effects over a long period of time.
