Having Daughters Increases Parents’ Identification with the Republican Party

[yellowcanine]

55. Authors not concluding causation? Well they did speculate about it, for sure

"The authors speculated that parents might prefer more socially conservative policies when they have daughters, which might explain the favoring of the GOP." Sounds like "have daughters.....favor GOP" to me.

Look, these researchers took one set of data - the GSS - and compiled a study from it. It is not at all clear to me how much they knew about the limitations of the data, i.e., methodology of collection and what was controlled; what not. Furthermore, it seems to me that any analysis of this type has to go deeply into other possible explanations of the data such as the example I gave. At the least those need to be rule out before one starts speculating as to cause. I also wonder what other data is out there the authors did not address. Isn't there more recent data which could be considered? Using one set of GSS data is shaky business, imo.