The Effect of Selection Bias in Studies of Fads and Fashions

Jerker Denrell and Balázs Kovács

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Most studies of fashion and fads focus on objects and practices that once were popular. We argue that limiting the sample to such trajectories generates a selection bias that obscures the underlying process and generates biased estimates. Through simulations and the analysis of a data set that has previously not been used to analyze the rise and fall of cultural practices, the New York Times text archive, we show that studying a whole range of cultural objects, both popular and less popular, is essential for understanding the drivers of popularity. In particular, we show that estimates of statistical models of the drivers of popularity will be biased if researchers use only trajectories of those practices that once were popular.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123471 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 23471&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0123471

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0123471

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone (plosone@plos.org).