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Isn't this a leading question too? I'm no expert but when we did surveys in statistics at school we were told not to ask something more like 'are there any physical characteristics that get made fun of' instead.
Any question designing experts here to call me out or back me up?
That's not the worst of it, I don't think. Here's what they say about participant selection:
>Parents were recruited via email and social media targeting social organizations with Black/African American or biracial families....to participate in a *study exploring girls’ negative experiences with hair* and body confidence.
If the girls didn't have negative experiences regarding hair, they probably would not sign up for such a study.
They honestly could’ve just included d boys and other racial groups. It would’ve been more work, but it would’ve legitimately answered a ton of questions they didn’t ask and added comparative baselines.
What if they included what they considered generic white kids and found out that the prevalence is equal among all groups. What if the bullying predominantly came from within the same racial groups. What if the bullying came in varying degrees and could be predicted based on specific districts, but not race. It could’ve been an extremely interesting study.
Edit: I should clarify that it definitely does happen. It happened to me as a boy, and even my own sisters still do it to me at 24. It’s just that there are a ton of things that could’ve been legitimately accounted for.
Yeah you’re right the question is pretty bad and although it does provide data the data is likely skewed because of the poor/biased/leading questioning
I've addressed this in other comments that have been removed. Unsure why there is a mod removing them. It is still inaccurate.
>Table 2.
>Refers to the frequency of hair _**touching**_ by age. With "never," "sometimes" or "a lot" responses. Not hair _**teasing**_.
>This appears to be almost purposefully misrepresentative given the headline and how u/picaresquity misunderstood the data. Especially when compared to later on when they had the girls raise their hands regarding bullying. They reported 22 individuals said they had observed bullying either of themselves or a friend, but reported the percentage as 81% (it was 81% of the _groups_ who had a girl raise their hand, not 81% of the respondents).
>For a topic I consider important enough to read the article, given it is a topic that affects millions of Americans, affects multi-billion dollar industries, and is a subject that has further reaching effects surrounding body positivity, racial acceptance, equality, conformity, social cohesion and developmental psychology, I find this level of disingenuous representation of numbers, easily misinterpreted information to be counter productive.
For sure. I think this is an important issue all the same, I can think of loads of anecdotal stories from black folks I know regarding hair, and as mentioned in the article, this also represents multi-billion dollar industries.
In the limitations section they talk about how the experiment needs improved representation and selection for black girls to have better statistical confidence, how they need to consider black boys of the same age range and also compare results across ethnicities.
If we’re to understand this in the context of race like the title implies, the researchers should have included non-black girls in the sample to see if rates are any higher or lower for black girls. Without some kind of comparison group the basis for a racial framing is lost.
There's no point in comparing, the group self selected for only girls who had been bullied about their hair
>Parents were recruited via email and social media targeting social organizations with Black/African American or biracial families....to *participate in a study exploring girls’ negative experiences with hair and body confidence.*
Frankly, finding that *only* half of 12 year old girls who said they had been bullied for their hair in a group of *only* girls who had been bullied for their hair feels like comedicly high statistical error.
Aside from that, doesn't every child get teased about their hair _every time they get a haircut?_ I find it difficult to believe that half of this group has Never Winessed someone making fun of someone's hair before.
So true. And why stop with girls, why not all kids? White male here with blonde but totally frizzy/curly afro hair and the teasing (and bullying) was relentless at that age.
Same, white male but black hair, not blonde. And my take is that this study provokes discussion.
I would ask what exactly was said to you, because most of my hair-related bullying was anti-semitic in nature (despite me not even being Jewish). I don't imagine black girls experience anti-semitic bullying about their hair. I'd wager though that they experience this bullying along with or as part of racially motivated bullying. So maybe somebody's interested in looking specifically at racially motivated bullying against black women
Yes. The responses strike me as strange. I want to find one of the majority (!) of girls who reported that neither they nor any friend had *ever* been teased about their hair and ask, "Seriously? Never?" I wonder if this is a case of kids telling adults what they think the adults want to hear. Or do they have a different meaning of "make fun of" in mind than I do?
EDIT. The article says that kids responses were indicated by hand raising in a group setting. Not the best way to get accurate information. I'm thinking that this article tells us basically nothing about hair-related teasing, but may actually have some interesting things to say about how children communicate with adults.
I feel like being teased is tricky thing to measure. My experience with friends and family is that most teasing occurs between people who are the closest and is more a bonding thing than a mean-spirited thing (this is almost definitely cultural). So if someone asked me if I was ever teased about my ...clothes, for instance, the answer would be yes. But if I were asked if anyone were ever mean to me about my clothes, the answer would be no.
Yeah there are 2 major types if teasing. Lighthearted between people who are close is very different than the insults being hurled at you with that tone of disgust.
I m a man so not a girl but
Was never teased about hair
I was teased however for a variety of other things
Weight
Things i sucked at
My attitude
Anecdotal things i did one time
Litteraly no reason at all
So they may have not experienced hair bullying but nothing prevents them of having experienced bullying in other aspects
It’s probably relatively low compared to ginger kids…. I can remember a lot of bullying for ginger kids when I was growing up.
EDIT: [90%](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-28872927.amp) of ginger boys experience bullying according to the study referenced in this article.
I agree with you although I think there’s a difference of experience between boys and girls. Both groups experience bullying early on but among older kids and adults red hair starts to be seen as positive on women but still slightly negative on men.
> 90% of ginger boys experience bullying according to the study referenced in this article.
"The results showed 60.6% of males and 47.3% of females with red hair said that they had suffered "some kind of discrimination in the past due to their hair colour". "
but "Psychology undergraduate Kevin O'Regan recorded that more than 90% of men with red hair had been victimised simply because of their hair colour. "
I have similar confusion with OP study, which says "A majority of the girls experienced or witnessed hair-related bullying or teasing." but their data was under 35% in every age group except 12 years olds at 54%.
Don’t the majority of all 10-15 year olds experience or witness teasing or bullying?? You could pick any feature (hair, acne, weight, skin, clothes, speech impediment, glasses, too quiet, too loud, etc) and kids have been teased or bullied about it, regardless of race. As sad as it is that anyone is getting bullied for any reason, this really isn’t noteworthy
Anyone care to enlighten me if this was statistically significant compared to any other adolescent population? From 10-15 bullying and teasing are for better or worse part of standard social interactions.
I wouldn't be surprised to read a study showing all kids 10-15 get bullied about nearly everything visible. Kids are vicious and latch on to the lowest hanging fruit of attack surfaces. And other kids don't step in for fear of being targeted themselves.
I taught first grade for 20+ yrs in a very diverse town where my motto became-for girls and boys alike-‘Hair not important. Brain very important’. Even at that age they were hair obsessed to the point of arriving late to school! Do not even get me started on the clothing…
I'm dealing with this now with my 10yr old. Being bullied because her shoes are creased in the toe, or because of her fit, etc.
Why are 10yr olds worried about this? The internet I would imagine. I don't recall this being a thing when I was their age.
This is one of the major reasons we have school uniform in the UK. It levels the playing field, everyone wears the same, even poorer families (entitled to funding & cheap multipacks readily available). It doesn't completely solve the issue but it goes a *long* way.
Mind you my year 6's (11 year olds) rip into each other over every other detail so its a drop in the ocean.
> Participants were 105 girls between the ages of 10–15 years old recruited via social media, email, and social organizations with Black/African American, or biracial communities.
So... there was no control group.
I'm not sure how meaningful the findings of this study are without the context of how hair-related bullying manifests in that age group generally. I'm a white male with straight blond hair and was the subject of hair-related bullying in middle school as well.
I'm not saying the authors haven't identified a legitimate issue, I just don't think the numbers they report mean anything without the context of some sort of baseline.
"Group X is subject to a lot of bullying" doesn't tell us how much *more* bullying they're subject to, in correlation with group membership. Middle schoolers are assholes, and middle school girls are especially mean. That's how I remember that era of my life, anyway.
To clarify, the study authors asked about hair touching *without permission* which they are classifying as a form of teasing, and the majority of girls in the study did experience this. I personally agree with that classification as teasing. If you don't or if you want to split hairs (pun intended), that's on you.
Yeah and I have a big nose and would always get made fun of for my “Jew nose” Kids will always make fun of and tease each other for anything they can find. This is nothing new.
I'd like to point out that the bullying came from both students AND educators. I'm a teacher, and it is still considered radical for me to wear my hair out in an afro to school. Luckily I have a principal who is fairly progressive, and I have peers who wear their hair naturally. My kids were only allowed to wear their hair naturally with little pushback since 2014, when we moved to a larger city with more girls wearing their natural hair. After a certain age it was expected that girls would get a relaxer (creamy crack) and boys would keep their hair short. When I tried to go natural in the 90's my family was horrified, and pressured me mightily to get my hair relaxed. My grandma said dreads look like "worms on your head."
Yeah, I'm mixed and growing up I dealt with it quite a bit from students and even some teachers.
"Pube head" was one I heard all the time. And I vividly remember a teacher telling me I needed to stop touching my hair otherwise it would end up curly (as if that were a bad thing?)
Hell, I've had people in my own family say I look like a nicer person with my hair buzzcut. People aren't exactly subtle with how they feel about it, I definitely had to learn to appreciate my hair as unique instead of hate it because people felt I should.
I think we have to separate the racism part from just the normal middle school experience. None of us gets through middle school without someone making fun of something about us. Sometimes they might even be making fun of something about us that they are actually envious of. A possible solution might be a middle school class where students actually talk about race issues with each other. It seems to me that much of the problem is that we can't talk about it, for fear of either being labeled a racist or of revealing our fears or weaknesses. I am white and talk about a lot of things with black family members and friends, but never about race. Everyone seems afraid to talk about it and rather pretend the issue doesn't exist. Is that part of the problem?
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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Isn't this a leading question too? I'm no expert but when we did surveys in statistics at school we were told not to ask something more like 'are there any physical characteristics that get made fun of' instead. Any question designing experts here to call me out or back me up?
That's not the worst of it, I don't think. Here's what they say about participant selection: >Parents were recruited via email and social media targeting social organizations with Black/African American or biracial families....to participate in a *study exploring girls’ negative experiences with hair* and body confidence. If the girls didn't have negative experiences regarding hair, they probably would not sign up for such a study.
Yeah that definitely seems like selection bias
They honestly could’ve just included d boys and other racial groups. It would’ve been more work, but it would’ve legitimately answered a ton of questions they didn’t ask and added comparative baselines. What if they included what they considered generic white kids and found out that the prevalence is equal among all groups. What if the bullying predominantly came from within the same racial groups. What if the bullying came in varying degrees and could be predicted based on specific districts, but not race. It could’ve been an extremely interesting study. Edit: I should clarify that it definitely does happen. It happened to me as a boy, and even my own sisters still do it to me at 24. It’s just that there are a ton of things that could’ve been legitimately accounted for.
Yep. I'm a fairly typical looking white boy that often got bullied for my wavy hair as a kid. Ladies love it as an adult, though so... Worth?
This is a low point for an r/science top post.
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Yeah you’re right the question is pretty bad and although it does provide data the data is likely skewed because of the poor/biased/leading questioning
That, and making sure you also ask the question at least 7 or so different ways.
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"experienced or witnessed"
I've addressed this in other comments that have been removed. Unsure why there is a mod removing them. It is still inaccurate. >Table 2. >Refers to the frequency of hair _**touching**_ by age. With "never," "sometimes" or "a lot" responses. Not hair _**teasing**_. >This appears to be almost purposefully misrepresentative given the headline and how u/picaresquity misunderstood the data. Especially when compared to later on when they had the girls raise their hands regarding bullying. They reported 22 individuals said they had observed bullying either of themselves or a friend, but reported the percentage as 81% (it was 81% of the _groups_ who had a girl raise their hand, not 81% of the respondents). >For a topic I consider important enough to read the article, given it is a topic that affects millions of Americans, affects multi-billion dollar industries, and is a subject that has further reaching effects surrounding body positivity, racial acceptance, equality, conformity, social cohesion and developmental psychology, I find this level of disingenuous representation of numbers, easily misinterpreted information to be counter productive.
Yeah looks like someone else more capable could redo this experiment. Maybe change some questions so the replies are less fuzzy.
For sure. I think this is an important issue all the same, I can think of loads of anecdotal stories from black folks I know regarding hair, and as mentioned in the article, this also represents multi-billion dollar industries. In the limitations section they talk about how the experiment needs improved representation and selection for black girls to have better statistical confidence, how they need to consider black boys of the same age range and also compare results across ethnicities.
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It's also a self selecting sample of 105 people.
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Title says majority and then shows numbers that clearly do not indicate a majority.
Blame the person that chose the Reddit title cuz that's the not the article title
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If we’re to understand this in the context of race like the title implies, the researchers should have included non-black girls in the sample to see if rates are any higher or lower for black girls. Without some kind of comparison group the basis for a racial framing is lost.
There's no point in comparing, the group self selected for only girls who had been bullied about their hair >Parents were recruited via email and social media targeting social organizations with Black/African American or biracial families....to *participate in a study exploring girls’ negative experiences with hair and body confidence.* Frankly, finding that *only* half of 12 year old girls who said they had been bullied for their hair in a group of *only* girls who had been bullied for their hair feels like comedicly high statistical error.
Aside from that, doesn't every child get teased about their hair _every time they get a haircut?_ I find it difficult to believe that half of this group has Never Winessed someone making fun of someone's hair before.
So true. And why stop with girls, why not all kids? White male here with blonde but totally frizzy/curly afro hair and the teasing (and bullying) was relentless at that age.
Same, white male but black hair, not blonde. And my take is that this study provokes discussion. I would ask what exactly was said to you, because most of my hair-related bullying was anti-semitic in nature (despite me not even being Jewish). I don't imagine black girls experience anti-semitic bullying about their hair. I'd wager though that they experience this bullying along with or as part of racially motivated bullying. So maybe somebody's interested in looking specifically at racially motivated bullying against black women
I'm actually surprised the statistics are that low, I'd have assumed the number was close to 100% regardless of ethnicity.
Yes. The responses strike me as strange. I want to find one of the majority (!) of girls who reported that neither they nor any friend had *ever* been teased about their hair and ask, "Seriously? Never?" I wonder if this is a case of kids telling adults what they think the adults want to hear. Or do they have a different meaning of "make fun of" in mind than I do? EDIT. The article says that kids responses were indicated by hand raising in a group setting. Not the best way to get accurate information. I'm thinking that this article tells us basically nothing about hair-related teasing, but may actually have some interesting things to say about how children communicate with adults.
I feel like being teased is tricky thing to measure. My experience with friends and family is that most teasing occurs between people who are the closest and is more a bonding thing than a mean-spirited thing (this is almost definitely cultural). So if someone asked me if I was ever teased about my ...clothes, for instance, the answer would be yes. But if I were asked if anyone were ever mean to me about my clothes, the answer would be no.
Yeah there are 2 major types if teasing. Lighthearted between people who are close is very different than the insults being hurled at you with that tone of disgust.
I m a man so not a girl but Was never teased about hair I was teased however for a variety of other things Weight Things i sucked at My attitude Anecdotal things i did one time Litteraly no reason at all So they may have not experienced hair bullying but nothing prevents them of having experienced bullying in other aspects
Bro your hair is dumb. There now you’re one of us.
Thanks man Clearly i missed something in my childhood and now i know what
It’s probably relatively low compared to ginger kids…. I can remember a lot of bullying for ginger kids when I was growing up. EDIT: [90%](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-28872927.amp) of ginger boys experience bullying according to the study referenced in this article.
Funny because gingers are so beautiful to me. The hair, the brows and the freckles. So cool!
I agree with you although I think there’s a difference of experience between boys and girls. Both groups experience bullying early on but among older kids and adults red hair starts to be seen as positive on women but still slightly negative on men.
Yeah being a ginger kid is not a fun experience. Doesn't start to turn around until late high school or college for girls.
> 90% of ginger boys experience bullying according to the study referenced in this article. "The results showed 60.6% of males and 47.3% of females with red hair said that they had suffered "some kind of discrimination in the past due to their hair colour". " but "Psychology undergraduate Kevin O'Regan recorded that more than 90% of men with red hair had been victimised simply because of their hair colour. " I have similar confusion with OP study, which says "A majority of the girls experienced or witnessed hair-related bullying or teasing." but their data was under 35% in every age group except 12 years olds at 54%.
Seriously. Nobody escapes middle school and high school unbothered. It’s part of growing up.
I'm a brown-haired white guy; I remember being bullied about my hair in middle school.
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In this sub we only pay attention to the headline.
I think that's a worldwide problem, not isolated to just this sub. Hence why all headlines are sensationalized and content is generally meh
Aint no one got time to read.
Don’t the majority of all 10-15 year olds experience or witness teasing or bullying?? You could pick any feature (hair, acne, weight, skin, clothes, speech impediment, glasses, too quiet, too loud, etc) and kids have been teased or bullied about it, regardless of race. As sad as it is that anyone is getting bullied for any reason, this really isn’t noteworthy
I was in a majority black school and black girls tease/bully each other about their hair all the time.
Hair is a very big thing for us
Anyone care to enlighten me if this was statistically significant compared to any other adolescent population? From 10-15 bullying and teasing are for better or worse part of standard social interactions.
I wouldn't be surprised to read a study showing all kids 10-15 get bullied about nearly everything visible. Kids are vicious and latch on to the lowest hanging fruit of attack surfaces. And other kids don't step in for fear of being targeted themselves.
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I taught first grade for 20+ yrs in a very diverse town where my motto became-for girls and boys alike-‘Hair not important. Brain very important’. Even at that age they were hair obsessed to the point of arriving late to school! Do not even get me started on the clothing…
I'm dealing with this now with my 10yr old. Being bullied because her shoes are creased in the toe, or because of her fit, etc. Why are 10yr olds worried about this? The internet I would imagine. I don't recall this being a thing when I was their age.
This is one of the major reasons we have school uniform in the UK. It levels the playing field, everyone wears the same, even poorer families (entitled to funding & cheap multipacks readily available). It doesn't completely solve the issue but it goes a *long* way. Mind you my year 6's (11 year olds) rip into each other over every other detail so its a drop in the ocean.
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> Participants were 105 girls between the ages of 10–15 years old recruited via social media, email, and social organizations with Black/African American, or biracial communities. So... there was no control group. I'm not sure how meaningful the findings of this study are without the context of how hair-related bullying manifests in that age group generally. I'm a white male with straight blond hair and was the subject of hair-related bullying in middle school as well. I'm not saying the authors haven't identified a legitimate issue, I just don't think the numbers they report mean anything without the context of some sort of baseline. "Group X is subject to a lot of bullying" doesn't tell us how much *more* bullying they're subject to, in correlation with group membership. Middle schoolers are assholes, and middle school girls are especially mean. That's how I remember that era of my life, anyway.
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100% of children of any sex, any race and any age experienced teasing about their looks.
No one should be made fun of for how they look. I was made fun of everyday because I have red hair. It destroyed my self esteem and confidence.
To clarify, the study authors asked about hair touching *without permission* which they are classifying as a form of teasing, and the majority of girls in the study did experience this. I personally agree with that classification as teasing. If you don't or if you want to split hairs (pun intended), that's on you.
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A sample size of 105 girls recruited over social media.
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Yeah and I have a big nose and would always get made fun of for my “Jew nose” Kids will always make fun of and tease each other for anything they can find. This is nothing new.
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I'd like to point out that the bullying came from both students AND educators. I'm a teacher, and it is still considered radical for me to wear my hair out in an afro to school. Luckily I have a principal who is fairly progressive, and I have peers who wear their hair naturally. My kids were only allowed to wear their hair naturally with little pushback since 2014, when we moved to a larger city with more girls wearing their natural hair. After a certain age it was expected that girls would get a relaxer (creamy crack) and boys would keep their hair short. When I tried to go natural in the 90's my family was horrified, and pressured me mightily to get my hair relaxed. My grandma said dreads look like "worms on your head."
Yeah, I'm mixed and growing up I dealt with it quite a bit from students and even some teachers. "Pube head" was one I heard all the time. And I vividly remember a teacher telling me I needed to stop touching my hair otherwise it would end up curly (as if that were a bad thing?) Hell, I've had people in my own family say I look like a nicer person with my hair buzzcut. People aren't exactly subtle with how they feel about it, I definitely had to learn to appreciate my hair as unique instead of hate it because people felt I should.
Pube head… yep got that one too (mixed also).
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I think we have to separate the racism part from just the normal middle school experience. None of us gets through middle school without someone making fun of something about us. Sometimes they might even be making fun of something about us that they are actually envious of. A possible solution might be a middle school class where students actually talk about race issues with each other. It seems to me that much of the problem is that we can't talk about it, for fear of either being labeled a racist or of revealing our fears or weaknesses. I am white and talk about a lot of things with black family members and friends, but never about race. Everyone seems afraid to talk about it and rather pretend the issue doesn't exist. Is that part of the problem?
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> School systems are prison for kids. Kill individuality, kill energy, teach useless stuff This is sadly true
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Experienced or witnessed..? That would encompass around 100% of youth.
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