The New Zealand Initiative’s Head of Research hopes a story on Radio New Zealand about youth drinking serves as a sharp wake-up call about the quality of reporting on drinking in New Zealand, and about Alcohol Healthwatch.
Radio New Zealand reported on a new report recycling some older stats from the 2014/15 Attitudes and Behaviour towards Alcohol Survey. Alcohol Healthwatch was reported as hoping the survey serves as a “sharp wake-up call.”
There are a few big problems in this story:
- Without a time trend, there’s no anchor for the numbers reported. Are they big or small? Has it dropped or risen? A rising number might imply more of a policy problem than a falling number, for the same number. The wake-up call framing makes it sound like there’s a rising number rather than a falling one. I blame RNZ on this one.
- The way the stats are presented…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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