The Portly Psychologist, or, on the Perils of Using a Control Group

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A questionnaire was sent to people who had requested reprints of an article on weight control as well as to a control group of people who requested reprints of articles on other topics. Although a majority of people who requested the weight-control paper reported that they had a weight problem, were overweight, had an overweight friend or relative, etc., the control group reported an equal preoccupation with obesity; in fact, the two groups did not differ on any measure except frequency of openended comments. The results imply that adequate control groups should be used whenever possible in generalizing about characteristics of groups.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: