If you’re like me (and I hope you’re not, for reasons that have nothing to do with this post), you probably often find yourself pondering some question and thinking, “Gee, I wish someone would do a study on that.”
So what studies or research do you think would prove fascinating but, as far as you know, have not been done? I’m thinking mainly of psychological and sociological stuff, but it could be anything.
Here’s one that occurred to me while perusing another thread. Someone should compare hand-washing frequency in public restrooms when another occupant is in the restroom to hand-washing frequency when there are no other occupants. I suspect that the researchers might find a big difference.
I was pondering my weekly grocery bill yesterday, which led me to thoughts of how, if one knows how to play the game, one can save quite a bit of money. And yet, we Americans are known for massive purchases of food. So I would like to know what the distribution of grocery bills is, to wit:
-Is a small portion of the population paying massive grocery bills, giving the appearance that the average food consumption is high?
The idea is similar to how the distribution of wealth in this country is very uneven, with (and these figures are not official) a quarter of the population has 80% of the wealth, or some such thing.
It would be interesting to find a study on crimes committed by blind people. What type of crimes do they commit and at what rate of occurrence. I have searched the internet looking for this information in the past and have not been able to find any such study.
I wish there was enough will in the medical or pharmlogical community to try to figure out how to kill the spirochetes that have colonized my body. I’m treated with antibiotics to keep my Lyme Disease at a manageable level, but the meds can’t actually kill the whole population in my body - just keeps the numbers down enough to where my immune system isn’t overwhelmed.
The conspiracy theorist in me says nobody will try to cure it because BIG PHARMA is happy to sell me antibiotics for the rest of my life. I’m sure there are many, many, MANY more devastating diseases out there that should be worked on first, but I don’t have any of those
Maybe if Bill Gates or the Bush daughters catch it, someone will throw some money at the problem. [wrings hands wondering who to attach this tick to]
I wish someone would do a true, unbiased, massive study on the wisdom of keeping marijuana illegal and what the true cost to society is. I doubt the situation would continue if people knew how bad it really was. Oh, and one qualification of the study is that the conclusion should be accepted by the government without all the silly posturing.
I wonder about the rates of spousal homocide in places that have low divorce rates. I’m thinking specifically of places where divorce is considered one of the most horrible things (do those still exist?) so killing would be easier than being divorced.
Also, I wish there was a better way to study/research serial murders. I am extremely interested in them but there are so many things that are difficult about studying them. That’s different but somewhat related.
I’ve mentioned this before. Is there any significant research being conducted on the obsessive sexual behavior that often results in criminal activity. I’m thinking of pedophilia, serial rape, exhibitionism and other sexual practices that victimize people.
With all the public outrage that is expressed when these crimes occur, it would seem logical to look for the cause.
Divorce is illegal in The Phillipines. Probably a few other places as well.
I wish someone would do a study to find out the percentage of men who, when told “You know what you did!”, actually did know what they had done. The study should also check how often (if ever) the woman in question eventually told them what they had done. I’ll bet both numbers would be very low.
You’d think it’d be also logical to do the best to figure out what the prevalence of actual paraphilias is as opposed to criminal behavior. Not that many tried, and I’m not saying it’s an easy task, but still that’s something we really don’t know. In various scholarly abstracts I have seen quotes from 0.1% to 50% of men being “pedophiles” or “attracted to children”. I mean I can understand it’s difficult, but a lot of things are difficult and I don’t think this is something to be ignored.
Also, I’d love to see some sort of a study on the % of people who drive drunk and don’t crash. All these statistics stating “10% of all fatal accidents involved an intoxicated driver” or some such are meaningless until you show me that less than 10% of all drivers on the road are intoxicated. Yeah, it’s pretty obvious, but I have not seen it conclusively demonstrated.
They recently did that study on narcissism, and I am quite curious whether it cuts across class boundaries or not. I suspect the further people are up on the social ladder the greater the population proportion of narcissistic people–but this is an untested theory based solely on the fact that I believe materialism may be a contributing factor to narcissism.
I also want to see longitudinal studies-- are those kids who are currently narcissistic narcissistic 20 years from now, after they’ve had kids and a family? I suspect younger people may be just more narcissistic in general, and once they experience family life and putting childrens’ immediate needs as top priority, it tends to drop away.
My hypothesis is that single, upper class populations will on average have a higher population proportion of narcissists than familied working-class populations.
Do violent men break everything except the television?
My local newpaper reported the arrest of a violent man who beat his wife, broke all the dishes and windows in the house, and threw his baby against the wall. His lawyer tried to claim insanity defence, but a social worker said that he was sane enough to stand trial.
The reason: he had enough logic to destroy everything he hated, but to avoid damaging what he liked-- (his TV , since he watched sports all the time.)
I suspect that, no, kids nowadays really are more narcissistic. I know entirely too many young parents who don’t understand that when you have a kid, they come first. Those poor kids are going to have a severe case of “Daddy doesn’t love me” when they grow up.
I’d like to see some unbiased studies on a lot of stuff - recovery programs versus detox centers, cell phone providers, etc. Unbiased is the key word there. That’d be hard to do.
Oh, and I echo the comments above that there needs to be an unbiased study on marijuana’s long-term and short-term benefits and problems. They’re there (both benefits and problems, that is), we all know they’re there, and we need definite proof that doesn’t pander to any one side so that we can be free to make our own decision.
I’d like to know if there are any national preferences regarding colours of food items and whether these correllate at all with the colours of indigenous ripe fruits.
Seems like a self-stabilizing situation. The most important thing for a successful child is a successful family, and for most families the key to success is successful adult partnership and not successful parenting. Often marriage comes first, the brats come second. It’s the “children are precious, most important bundle of joys on the planet” approach that produced the narcissists of today.
I mean I can understand it’s difficult, but a lot of things are difficult and I don’t think this is something to be ignored.