I have been shocked to read that ‘One in three married women are addicted to online bingo’. I am not shocked by the headline, more dismayed that drivel such as this gets published in the first place.
The headline comes from a press release on journalism.co.uk which publicises a ‘survey’ by a portal called New Bingo Sites. According to the survey results, a third of married women are addicted to playing bingo online. And where did these results come from? A survey conducted by a bingo site (there’s problem number one…).
Let’s for a moment say that their survey was a good one, of sound methodology, with a control group etc. You simply cannot extrapolate results from a mere 2,000 survey respondents to even suggest that this is true of the remaining millions of married women who have not been surveyed. To be fair to those making this claim they are not on their own in making such wild extrapolations, although a website that calls itself journalism.co.uk should know better than to publish such nonsense, press release on not they still have some duty to uphold journalistic integrity.
On the infographic provided by New Bingo Sites, there is no mention of addiction, let alone exactly how that would be measured. There is a ‘1 in 3 married women play online bingo’, which is not the same as ‘addicted to’, and again, only 2,000 respondents on the survey. So again, I’m guessing that if surveys could be described as articles of clothing, this one would be a very old stained pair of y-fronts.
We are not linking to the original page as that will get the website more visitors, and we don’t think this type of journalism should be encouraged.
Am I taking this a bit too seriously? After all, it’s only just a survey. Well I don’t think so. It creates negative perceptions about online bingo, by portraying spurious quasi research as fact. We are all aware that bingo does have its addicts, but to suggest that it effects such numbers is ridiculous, and potentially damaging to the industry.
I have left a comment on the original website asking for more details to give them the chance to prove me wrong by providing access to their methodology and the original questions/answers, but am not holding my breath for a reply.
