Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry
Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Whooter:
--- Quote from: "psy" ---And yet somehow people who are satisfied do post, say, amazon ratings, and not just the unsatisfied ones. Here. That's a customer review page for a blender I selected at random. As you can see, satisfied customers will not just tick a star, but also write walls of text on what they thought of the product. Most of the reviews are very good while one in particular is very bad, due to the unit failing early, customer support being bad, and it taking a long time to get a replacement. According to your theory, none of those positive ratings should be there. Yet they are. The vast majority of them are. What I take from this is that the blender is very good, but in the off chance it breaks, i'm SOL. Even I write reviews, and the vast majority are positive. I can't even remember the last negative review I wrote.
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When Amazon first came out I thought the same thing as you said “none of those positive ratings should be there. Yet they are.” I was astonished because most people dont normally write reviews unless there is a problem. The ones that are frustrated with customer service or have to pay return shipping or never get a satisfactory response typically want to lash back and tell the world to alert others of their misfortune. The guy that is happy just wants to ride his new ride mower, not sit down and write back to the company.
Then the articles started coming out, Amazon was tickling their customers with “Would you take a few minutes to tell us what you think about your new Blender”? Which was mildly successful and accounted for generating more positive reviews, but Amazon and other online merchants demanded more so they started paying people with cash and free merchandize if they would write positive reviews.
Sandra Parker, a freelance writer who was hired by a review factory this spring to pump out Amazon reviews for $10 each, said her instructions were simple. “We were not asked to provide a five-star review, but would be asked to turn down an assignment if we could not give one,” said Ms. Parker, whose brief notices for a dozen memoirs are stuffed with superlatives like “a must-read” and “a lifetime’s worth of wisdom.”
New York Times
I will pay for positive feedback on TripAdvisor.” A Craigslist post proposed this: “If you have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money please respond.”
Paid Content
Psy, if you look closely at the reviewers of the blender, you selected at random, you will notice that they have written hundreds of reviews on various products. The 5th one down “Joanna Daneman” has written reviews on 8 sewing machines over the past few weeks (for a total of $2,300) along with over 100 reviews on several other products, over 500 in the past year and 2,500 total. Her history can be seen here (Joanne Daneman). The ones who had problems with their product have no history except the negative review.
She is a very busy lady but I dont think her hobby is sewing if you know what I mean. This is just a random person that you linked to, what are the chances?
Buyer beware, I never believed those reviews from the start. Human nature counters their validity.
--- Quote from: "psy" ---Why is it that the vast majority of "reviews" here by former participants in programs are negative? Is there something about programs that make them unique when it comes to "customer" reviews. I grant you that it's not a valid scientific study (and neither is Behrens), but at the same time I think most who shop online will tell you that customer ratings, averaged, are generally a pretty good indicator of the quality of the product. Is there something unique to programs that exempts them from this principle that applies to pretty much everything I can think of? Or is the more plausible explanation that the quality of the product really isn't that great in reality. Can you explain this? I mean it's not like i'm removing positive reviews. After all. You're still around, despite almost universal insistence I get rid of you.
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If we were able to get a list of all the kids as they graduated from programs and asked them to come to fornits and write a review I think you would see a lot more positive postings. I also believe that there were many kids who hovered and read here and decided not to post based on the hostility that existed here on the boards in the past. People with “positive outcome” posts were not treated very well here if you remember. They were all accused of having Stockholm syndrome, but I don’t want to open that can of worms, this discussion can be for another time, another thread maybe.
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psy:
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---Psy, if you look closely at the reviewers of the blender, you selected at random, you will notice that they have written hundreds of reviews on various products. The 5th one down “Joanna Daneman” has written reviews on 8 sewing machines over the past few weeks (for a total of $2,300) along with over 100 reviews on several other products, over 500 in the past year and 2,500 total. Her history can be seen here (Joanne Daneman).
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And if you look at her ratings, you can see she doesn't give everything 5 stars so that would seem to conflict with what you're saying. Also, she seems to be the only "professional reviewer" out of the first page. The rest have reviewed anywhere from 1-4 products to several pages of reviews. My guess is Amazon tries to actively discourage the kind of astroturfing you're suggesting happens as it's in their interest to provide customers with accurate ratings. If it gets known that their rating systems are bad, customers will go elsewhere. It is indeed always going to be a back and forth fight, but additions like the "real name" system, and verification that you have indeed bought the product do help things. Such shenanigans don't go unnoticed and eventually the clever algorithms balance things out. Sadly, unlike amazon, we have no way here of, for example, verifying whether a poster is indeed a program parent as claimed or is instead a paid representative of say -- Aspen Education. Like you said, "buyer beware".
--- Quote ---The ones who had problems with their product have no history except the negative review.
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Now that's just no true at all. What about this one (2 reviews, mixed ratings)? Or this one (4 pages of reviews, mixed ratings)? Out of the three negative ratings on the first page, those two seemed to both rate products from time to time. The one with two reviews reviewed the other product very positively. So two out of three people who rated the product negatively both had rated other products and both had a history of rating things they liked positively.
If you're trying to argue that anybody who ever reviews a product positively is paid to do so -- well. That's just silly. You can try and tell me that all those people who liked the blender were paid zombies, but that doesn't jibe with the facts that most of the posters are verified real names (based on their credit cards), and most did not make a job out of rating stuff. Even if what you were saying was true. Wouldn't that mean that there should be more positive program reviews here, and not less? If so many people are helped by programs as you claim, as your "study" claims, where are the positive reviews? Where are the hordes of new graduates out to share their thanks with the world for how their lives were saved? Why is it that the vast majority of program reviews are bad?
You argue that if they show up, they're driven off, but more often what I've observed is a more of a Q&A sort of thing where questions are asked that lead the students to think about whether, for example, that French Maid's outfit and lapdance were really appropriate as therapy at Aspen Education's Mount Batchelor Academy. Here's even an interview with a Carlbrook program parent. Other times it's with students (and i'm having a difficult time finding a good example as positive reviews of programs are hard to come by). And more often than not, their opinions change. To explain why, I'll quote Richard Ofshe on thought reform / coercive persuasion.
--- Quote ---The surprising aspect of the situationally adaptive response is that the attitudes that develop are unstable. They tend to change dramatically once the person is removed from an environment that has totalistic properties and is organized to support the adaptive attitudes. Once removed from such an environment, the person is able to interact with others who permit and encourage the expression of criticisms and doubts, which were previously stifled because of the normative rules of the reform environment (Schein 1961, p. 163; Lifton 1961, pp. 87-116, 399-415; Ofshe and Singer 1986).
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In other words. It's not like it's impossible to find positive reviews. It's just that if you ask the same person who wrote a positive reviews to rewrite it in a few years, the content and attitude would likely be wildly different. That's why you won't find positive reviews here. As soon as somebody is exposed to "heretical" information that contradicts the group dogma, they either shut off completely and leave the site in terror, or they find themselves absorbed in new and different ideas. Very often coming to the conclusion that their once positive views of their experiences in, for example, wearing a french maid outfits, were not so positive or healthy after all. That's why I think there aren't very many positive "reviews".
Whooter:
--- Quote from: "psy" ---
If you're trying to argue that anybody who ever reviews a product positively is paid to do so -- well. That's just silly.
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But Amazon pays people to review their products, whether they buy it or not. They dont pay people for bad reviews. I think that you would agree that the buyer cannot trust the reviews not knowing if they are real or not.
--- Quote from: "psy" --- Even if what you were saying was true. Wouldn't that mean that there should be more positive program reviews here, and not less? If so many people are helped by programs as you claim, as your "study" claims, where are the positive reviews? Where are the hordes of new graduates out to share their thanks with the world for how their lives were saved? Why is it that the vast majority of program reviews are bad?
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No, because Amazon along with paying for reviews contact people after their purchase to ask them to review the product. Fornits doesnt do this. If they did contact graduates they would get more feed back on the positive side.
--- Quote from: "psy" ---You argue that if they show up, they're driven off, but more often what I've observed is a more of a Q&A sort of thing where questions are asked that lead the students to think about whether, for example, that French Maid's outfit and lapdance were really appropriate as therapy at Aspen Education's Mount Batchelor Academy. Here's even an interview with a Carlbrook program parent. Other times it's with students (and i'm having a difficult time finding a good example as positive reviews of programs are hard to come by). And more often than not, their opinions change. To explain why, I'll quote Richard Ofshe on thought reform / coercive persuasion.
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Exactly, you face them with the french maid question which is a negative, why? Why not listen to their story and experiences, treat them equally, and accept it like all the others? Why, when a person comes here with a negative experience you not ask them to talk about their positive experiences with the program? Maybe ask if they forged any new friendships within the program, felt safe in a structured environment, enjoyed white water rafting etc. I know that you were here for some of the graduates which were driven off and not felt welcome because of their views.
You mentioned in a previous post that many here would like to see me driven off because of my views. How many here would want to see a poster driven off because of their negative views towards programs? A person with positive feedback to share about programs just wasn't welcome here. The old fornits just wasn't welcoming to them.
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psy:
If I seem to understand you correctly you're arguing:
1, Reviews cannot be trusted when the reviewer has a financial stake in the outcome (not true, see final point) and:
2. You can't tell if people on the Amazon are real or not (you can), or whether they actually bought the product (you can, as you can't review products otherwise).
In the case of Amazon, i'd dispute these two points, as they've mostly fixed any issues they one had, but i'm more interested in the fact you won't concede these two, very related points:
1. Studies cannot be trusted when the people doing the study have a vested financial interest in the outcome and:
2. You can't tell whether the data supplied by a program is accurate or whether it was just made up of whole cloth.
Whooter:
--- Quote from: "psy" ---If I seem to understand you correctly you're arguing:
1, Reviews cannot be trusted when the reviewer has a financial stake in the outcome (not true, see final point) and:
2. You can't tell if people on the Amazon are real or not (you can), or whether they actually bought the product (you can, as you can't review products otherwise).
In the case of Amazon, i'd dispute these two points, as they've mostly fixed any issues they one had,
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I disagree, paying people to write favorable reviews in addition to asking buyers to review their experience greatly increases favorable responses.
--- Quote from: "psy" --- but i'm more interested in the fact you won't concede these two, very related points:
1. Studies cannot be trusted when the people doing the study have a vested financial interest in the outcome and:
2. You can't tell whether the data supplied by a program is accurate or whether it was just made up of whole cloth.
--- End quote ---
It needs to be disclosed who is conducting the study, I agree. In the case of the Behrens study I am not sure how much more transparent they could be. They hired an outside agency and paid for an IRB (independent review board) to review and approve the study. A review board which is very reputable.
I agree it would be better if a private outside agency or government agency conducted the study, but this hasnt happened yet and maybe never will, so the next best thing is to fund the study yourself.
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