When I was living in Trinidad and Tobago (locally abbreviated as TT), I taught interactive seminars in Human Behavior for MBAs at the University of the West Indies Graduate Business School. We met Saturday mornings because all the students were employed full-time in positions of responsibility. Each week I’d assign a newspaper or magazine article for them to read and be prepared to discuss in class. One week I had them read an article in a national newspaper that said 97% of TT’s population were Facebook users, which ranked them #1 in the world.
How To Fact-Check
When asked to explain why TT would be #1, every student produced good-sounding reasons
Most concluded that because of this high penetration rate*, they would definitely shift more of their advertising budget out of traditional newspapers, radio, and television and into Facebook. All accepted the claim at face value. None were skeptical.
*The penetration rate is a measure of how much a product or service is used relative to the total population. The claim of a 97% penetration rate meant only 3% of the islands’ population did not have a Facebook account. “Now,” I said, “Let’s find out where that 97% came from.
Trinidad and Tobago have many neighborhoods like this, strongly suggesting that 97% of the population are Facebook users is inaccurate
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Start by asking yourself the question, “Does it make sense?”
Statisticians call this face validity, a fancy term for a subjective assessment. It’s a simple first step for measuring overall validity because it’s quick, easy, and intuitive. If it makes sense to you that virtually everyone in Trinidad and Tobago is online and has a Facebook account, don’t waste your time reading the rest. But if you suspect I’ve got something up my sleeve, please read on.
Facebook penetration rates have only two numbers
All you need is your country’s total population and the number of accounts/users. If you can’t find penetration rates,, just divide the number of Facebook users by the country’s total population and multiply the result by 100.
The easiest way to find your country’s Digital Profile is to go to Datareportal’s site. Here’s the information they have on Trinidad and Tobago
Do you have more confidence in the numbers above or in those in the newspaper article you read? Why?
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If you’re still not convinced, how about taking a look at the these tables?
First-place India has 315 million Facebook users. The United States is ranked second, with 175 million Facebook users. Indonesia is third, with 120 million Facebook users. TT’s world ranking is 125th, with 770,000 users.
Now let’s look at those three countries’ Facebook penetration rates
India’s Facebook penetration rate is about 20% (315 million divided by 1.5 billion x 100). The percentage of Facebook users in the US is 50%, Indonesia’s is 45%, and TT’s is 56%.
How about internet user rates?
Monaco (102%), Iceland (99.9%), and Gibraltar (95%) are the countries with the three highest internet user rates in the world. The bottom three are Somalia (2%), Eritrea (2%), and Guinea-Bissau (2%).
How about a side-by-side comparison of internet and Facebook user penetration?
Note that in each case, Facebook use is always lower than internet use. Why does this make sense? Because you need the internet to access Facebook but you don’t need Facebook to access the internet. Based upon the simple, skinny data we’re using for our example, all the above seems to make sense. Here’s the same table, with the outrageous claim added.
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Could it be that the study was designed produced the 97% statistic?
Do what the pros do and ask these three questions:
Who participated in the study?
The study did not draw its conclusions from a sample of all Trinidadians. The only people surveyed were 16-34; none younger, none older. Any sample that throws out everyone under 16 and over 34 and older deliberately distorts the findings. In this case, they felt those outside their target population would lower their numbers. The median age of the TT population at the time was 35 years old. Holy cow! This means that half of the population of Trinidad and Tobago were excluded from the survey.
How did researchers contact those 16- to 34-year-olds?
Surveys were administered only via social media. Limiting the sample to only those who are on social media deliberately distorts the findings. Asking only those people with social media accounts deliberately distorts the findings b. The only legitimate claim they could make is this: 97% of 17-34-year-old Trinidadians with social media accounts have Facebook accounts, too.
Who paid for the study?
This is always a great question to ask. In this case, the research that produced this outrageous claim was paid for and conducted by a TT company that sold social media marketing services.
The study was deliberately designed to get results favorable to the marketing company’s goal, which was to get businesses to spend more on social media marketing. The more they inflate the numbers, the more decision-makers will be convinced to increase their social media budget.
The sample and the method were intentionally designed to tell the story the sponsors wanted to tell
More times than not, when marketing people run the research, they find what they want to find so they can sell what they want to sell.
What would you do if you want to be able to make a case for business folks to spend more on the social media marketing services your company sells?
- Conduct your own survey, ignoring all other sources of data.
- Make sure you collect information only from people with the highest rates of internet and social media usage.
- Easy peezy, lemon squeezy.
Bonus
End-of-year reviews showed students found this to be one of the most valuable lessons they learned: Don’t assume any single-source information you read or hear is true. When you look into things for yourself, you will more often than not find self-serving voodoo statistics.
View of Port of Spain downtown from Lady Young Road
