Number of Walmarts in a county correlates strongly with the number of hate groups

[Modelworks]

Rural, right-leaning folk LOVE walmart

It is really sad when you hear people use phrases like " Lets go hang out at the walmart".

 

[busydude]

This passes for science? No wonder there's no consensus on global warming.

Er.. What?

 

[ImpulsE69]

We have a Wal-Mart on almost every other street corner and we don't have any hate crimes. Just a bunch of fat women in pajama pants, just begging for a hate crime.

 

[DrPizza]

So professors at 3 different universities thought this was something worth doing a study on? And people still respect degrees from these places

When I first read it, I considered that maybe it was a planted story to see how fast it spread through media. I.e., the "researchers" were actually researching something else. Either that, or they meant per capita - which isn't mentioned anywhere in the article, though I didn't try to dig up the original paper.

 

[busydude]

When I first read it, I considered that maybe it was a planted story to see how fast it spread through media. I.e., the "researchers" were actually researching something else. Either that, or they meant per capita - which isn't mentioned anywhere in the article, though I didn't try to dig up the original paper.

I've got full access to that paper. Do you want me to post anything specific?

 

[sactoking]

we have 2 walmarts within 5 miles of each other.

We've got 2 walmarts, a target, a costco, 2 home depots and a lowes all within 7 miles of each other and our county has a population of ~55,000.

 

[DrPizza]

I've got full access to that paper. Do you want me to post anything specific?

Is it an increase in hate groups, per capita, or simply an increase in hate groups. In other words, does the study simply show that the higher the population, the greater the number of Walmarts - and the higher the number of hate groups? (Which I somewhat suspected.)

 

[RavenSEAL]

When I walk through a walmart I am still amazed at people shopping at the store. All I see when I go there is overpriced junk. They still sell HDMI cables for $50 and USB cables for $20.

That sounds to me like best buy.

 

[busydude]

Is it an increase in hate groups, per capita, or simply an increase in hate groups. In other words, does the study simply show that the higher the population, the greater the number of Walmarts - and the higher the number of hate groups? (Which I somewhat suspected.)

First.. the title of the paper: Social Capital, Religion, Wal-Mart, and Hate Groups in America.

They tried to estimate the number the number of hate groups using regression and they found out that.. presence of Wal-Mart stores had statistically significant influence on number of hate groups.

All you need to look into is this table..

Look under Extended Poisson Regression. Why didn't they do Logistic Regression? It has been shown time and again that Logistic regression provides better fit.

Edit: Here is the abstract to avoid any confusion:

Objective. The recent surge in hate group activity is a concern to many citizens and policymakers.We examine the roles of socioeconomic factors measured at the county
level that are hypothesized to account for the presence of such groups, including social capital and religious affiliations. Methods. We estimate a Poisson regression model using counts of hate groups provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center for each of the over 3,000 U.S. counties. Our regressors include a wider set of variables than has been considered in previous studies, such as Jefferson and Pryor (1999). Results. Our approach produces a better statistical fit than that in Jefferson and Pryor’s paper, and the additional regressors contribute significantly to our understanding of hate groups. Conclusion. Both social capital stocks and religious affiliation exert an independent and statistically significant influence on the number of hate groups, as does the presence of Wal-Mart stores, holding other factors constant.

 

[KeithP]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

And don't forget the Law of Negative Walmart News: Follow the money deep enough, it always leads to unions.

-KeithP

 

[pontifex]

interesting. no walmarts in my county but i bet there are multiple hate groups

 

[Ichinisan]

Number of people in a particular county correlates to
{

Number of Wal-marts in a particular county

and

Number of hate groups in a particular county
​

}

Number of people

 

[LumbergTech]

Did they control for places with large populations that don't have walmarts or is there not such a thing?