*nods* A very good point; I should mention that our online sample was acquired through Mechanical Turk, a website where people are paid for doing small amounts of work (a very cool site, by the way, if you ever get a chance to check it out!)
At any rate, the important point is that in most of our Mechanical Turk studies, the average participant is about 29-31 years of age, and it's about 50% male, 50% female. So, age wise, while participants are, on average, older than furries, it's not like we're comparing a group of 50 year olds to 20 year olds. That said, there is definitely validity to your point, and it's something I'll add to my to-do list =) Perhaps I'll pull out just the participants on MTurk who are 18-24 and compare them, as a group, to furries.
That said, the original group is not an entirely invalid control group: remember that there is NO perfect control group: a control group is chosen based on the question you want to answer. In our case, we're frequently asked "are furries maladjusted people?" And my response is always the same: "compare to who?" One way to answer is to say "compared to the average American", in which case, well, our MTurk responses are, demographically speaking, fairly representative of the "Average American". The question you're asking is "compare to the average 18-24 year old", which is another perfectly valid question =) I suspect, unsurprisingly, we'll find that any differences that exist between furries and our original control group will be far smaller, and perhaps become insignificant, when that comparison is made. I still feel my original point still stands though: furries do differ from "the average American"; it's just not in terms of dysfunction =P
Anyway, I'll let you know when I manage to get to that analysis (it may be a little while, as I'm currently backed up with teaching stuff; e-mail me ([email protected]) if I haven't gotten back to you on this within a week =)
*nods* A very good point; I should mention that our online sample was acquired through Mechanical Turk, a website where people are paid for doing small amounts of work (a very cool site, by the way, if you ever get a chance to check it out!)
At any rate, the important point is that in most of our Mechanical Turk studies, the average participant is about 29-31 years of age, and it's about 50% male, 50% female. So, age wise, while participants are, on average, older than furries, it's not like we're comparing a group of 50 year olds to 20 year olds. That said, there is definitely validity to your point, and it's something I'll add to my to-do list =) Perhaps I'll pull out just the participants on MTurk who are 18-24 and compare them, as a group, to furries.
That said, the original group is not an entirely invalid control group: remember that there is NO perfect control group: a control group is chosen based on the question you want to answer. In our case, we're frequently asked "are furries maladjusted people?" And my response is always the same: "compare to who?" One way to answer is to say "compared to the average American", in which case, well, our MTurk responses are, demographically speaking, fairly representative of the "Average American". The question you're asking is "compare to the average 18-24 year old", which is another perfectly valid question =) I suspect, unsurprisingly, we'll find that any differences that exist between furries and our original control group will be far smaller, and perhaps become insignificant, when that comparison is made. I still feel my original point still stands though: furries do differ from "the average American"; it's just not in terms of dysfunction =P
Anyway, I'll let you know when I manage to get to that analysis (it may be a little while, as I'm currently backed up with teaching stuff; e-mail me ([email protected]) if I haven't gotten back to you on this within a week =)