63% of poll results are entirely made up

Really useful to have this kind of probing, clear, and detailed analysis of the report, a report which seems to be (understandably) attracting a lot of attention. Your critique works well because it is specific on what the report lacks, and that’s useful to me and other readers I suspect – thanks for sharing.

Hi Alison, thanks for a critical break-down of such an essential area of research – it is important that such reports are scrutanised so much because such claims can be very damaging. This is especially true when we speak of issues centred on children.

Highly relevant analysis, considering the ongoing debates of how far to take police-checking and vetting of those who are in charge of vulnerable people – particularly children.

Many thanks for the analysis.

Good read, thanks. It echo’s my feelings, I tried to read the report as a factual document but came across far too many instances of evidence given without sourcing it.

If you can’t show people where you’re getting your “facts” from then I’m afraid no-one should take what you’re saying as more than opinion.

I found it really distracting – I kept twitching at the way references were being used which actually made it hard to engage with the argument.

I’m sure there were plenty of sound references in there too, but generally it felt as though it was amplifying a given view very uncritically. And I say this as someone who really dislikes ultra-sexual culture (and lads’ mags); it just felt surprisingly journalistic for what was billed as a deep review.

See my reply to Phil – for me, the journalistic use of evidence really undermined the arguments that the report was making.

There was also a lot of argument-from-worst-cases (for example, from studies of deeply-deprived youngsters) which I suspect also need to be treated quite carefully in a general discussion of culture.

I absolutely didn’t expect to react like that either – I have a daughter of 8 who loves Lady Gaga and the Pussycat Dolls and goodness knows what that’s doing to her mental health…

Lady Gaga and the Pussycat Dolls

Sounds like some sort of ironic supergroup.

I think I’d have been happy with opinion/argument and fewer (but harder) facts.

It’s obviously an area where attitudes and opinions will matter as much as the data – but if you’re going to use data, for the love of everything, use good data.

Thanks for this, I’ve been reading it too. I’m interested in the subject area, particularly gender and teen relationships, and I sympathise with *some* of its concerns, so I’m especially frustrated by its low quality. I agree with your points about the failings of the report.

Thus far I’ve only got through the executive summary (trying to see if the points are properly backed up) but a sadly low proportion of the references seem to unproblematically say what the report implies they say. I don’t know if executive summaries are traditionally particularly heinous for misrepresentation – I mean, of course they’re making the fundamental points in the punchiest way, but that shouldn’t exclude them from basic standards.

Probably the worst offender I’ve found so far was on video games: “The link between violent content and aggression has been cited in several studies and it is widely accepted that exposure to content that children are either emotionally or cognitively not mature enough for can have a negative impact.” The slipperiness of this sentence looked particularly suspicious (cited… widely accepted?), and lo, one of the three “several studies” was in fact a book surveying research on the effects of video games and concluding that there *wasn’t* a link between violent content in video games and aggression. Which is just startlingly disingenuous use of evidence.

Yes – surprisingly journalistic is quite right. I also really do wonder how this author came to write the report, since as far as I can tell she’s not particularly expert in the field.

Incidentally (apologies for double-post), for anybody who’s interested in the subject area and frustrated by this report, a similar report (on “Sexualised goods aimed at children”) was prepared for the Scottish Parliament in 2008, and looks as if it was quite a bit more measured and well-researched.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/equal/reports-10/eor10-02.htm

Thanks for this Alison, I found it really helpful. I’m still working my way through the Sexualisation Review and have similar concerns to the ones you have raised.

I found your points particularly useful for anyone trying to reflect on this report since it raises many worries most of us will have (particularly if we’re parents). However if it’s going to inform policy or practice it does need to be robust, and I’m not sure how strong a review it is.

I appreciate not everyone is experienced in critically appraising reviews and consultation documents so I’ve blogged about how to do this in relation to the UK Sexualisation Review, and also linked to several other reviews on the same issue by other countries (including the Scottish one Metal-eating arachnid links to above, which is a good example of reviewing this complex issue).

http://www.drpetra.co.uk/blog/sexualisation-of-young-people-report-released-how-useful-are-the-findings-here%E2%80%99s-your-chance-to-find-out/

Ah, fascinating (and what a brilliant user name). I wondered about the videogame evidence, but didn’t have time to go into it. I don’t actually see a lot of sexualisation in the zombie shootouts favoured in our house…I worry about all sorts of other implications but that’s not one of them.

I don’t see why the executive summary should be different – in many ways, you wouldn’t expect a summary to cite references in that way. And yet it’s really, really journalistic.

Thanks for your comments. I found it extremely confusing, in fact, but that’s probably because so many little alarm bells were going off in my head.

It just strikes me that the topic is ripe for moral panic, so I would have liked a clear-headed review of the topic, ideally with input from the general public. I’m sure all those groups consulted are extremely sincere and have valuable things to say, but they seemed to be coming from, how can I put it, a more extreme experience?

I think I’d have been happier with it as an outcome of a political think-tank, rather than a review, but it clearly sets itself up as serious review and yet fails to reach that level.

An interesting dissection of the review. This garnered a lot of media attention when it was published – it is a shame journalists didn’t approach it with the rigour you applied!

The worse thing is that by using such weak arguments, policymakers weaken further what might actually be a very worthwhile policy.