“Spurious relationships” are relationships in which two events are having no direct connection, it might be wrong when inferred that they do have a connection. The two independent variables may, however, be found to have a connection mainly as a coincidence or due to the existence of unforeseen factors (Stark 68). The sale of ice creams in the city and cases of drowning can illustrate a superb example of spurious relationships.
The reason is that ice creams record high sales when it is hot, and it is same time people love going for swimming sessions. Therefore, the chances of many people drowning in the swimming pools increase with an increase in the number of people going for swimming sessions. This relationship may be true although there is no direct connection linking the ice cream and the drowning effect.
However, the spurious relationships can hold water due to the existence of a third factor which is the weather. It is obvious that when it is hot, people will tend to buy ice creams than when it is cold. At the same time, others will tend to flock swimming pools due to high temperatures but not due to increased ice cream sales.
“Spurious Relationships”
“The more violence on television young people view, the higher the rate of violent behavior among young people.” This is a negative correlation because the young people may enjoy violence in the television as a source of entertainment but the behavior acquired turn out to contradict the expectations of the society. There are other traits that young people can learn from the violence they view, and if taken positively, they can be useful to the community.
For example, when youths learn from films characters about being better leaders who are brave and courageous, they remain focused that it is their role to protect their siblings (Stark 88). Once this is developed in their minds, they end up being responsible leaders since they do not fear anything that might come their way. On the other hand, the youth may end up practicing everything they view from screens hence becoming so violent in life, although not everyone may be violent.
Youths might grow up to be violent even if they did not view any form of violence when growing up. It may be in the blood or acquired from environments they lived in hence making it clear that there exists no direct linkage between what was viewed. What causes youths to be violent comes from the environment and not directly from whatever they view. For example, if they feel that they are being deprived of their rights, they may protest, and in the course, some elements of violence may show.
Here, the deprivation of rights has acted as a confounding factor that led to violence (Stark 75). This form of violence cannot be attributed to whatever the youth watched when growing up. This is because, if the rights of the youths are respected as required by law, no violence can erupt regardless of whether they viewed violence at their tender ages or not.
Conclusion
Researchers need to study other factors affecting the youth that might trigger violence. They need to study the impact of violence on television in terms of entertaining content. They should be able to analyze how much the television influences the youth to draw reliable conclusions. Researchers should target backgrounds of the youth in their work to study violence among the youth, as well.
Works Cited
Stark, R. Study Guide for Stark’s Sociology, 10th ,ed. New York: Cengage Learning; 10 edition, 2006. Print.
Stark, R. Sociology .New York : Cengage Learning. 1998. Print.