Cambridge University has now supplied more response to the article on bullying in The Observer. The percentages in the article were based on those who expressed an opinion. So, the University is conceding that the numbers in the article are the correct percentages with ‘don’t knows‘ excluded.
If you have no experience of how the university deals with bullying, you most likely will respond ‘don’t know‘ to the statement “I am satisfied with how bullying and harassment are addressed in my department”.
‘Don’t knows‘ are missing data. Missing data generally adds zero value to your analysis and can skew potential results.
If you have experienced bullying, then you will have an opinion, whether good or bad. The Observer decided that this is the most useful statistic to report to their readers (which they are entitled to do).
Whether to include or exclude ‘don’t knows’ depends on whether you value “clean data” or value “more data” — both have some validity. The 21 Group believes The Observer‘s approach was best.
However, whether the number is 40% dissatisfied with the University’s response to bullying with (DKs included) or 45 % (with DKs excluded), it is still a very bad number.
The point is; why aren’t the numbers much closer to zero.
Zero tolerance to bullying means these numbers should be zero.
8 Comments
Bullfinch · 15 April 2025 at 17:19
This is just embarrassing from the university. Please someone make them stop.
The poverty of their arguments is cringeworthy.
Xerxes · 15 April 2025 at 18:00
Out of interest, who is coming up with these arguments?
Is this someone in the senior management team? I really hope not.
Anon · 15 April 2025 at 18:16
“if anything we will be working even harder to eliminate this practice from our midst”
Woohoo – the mind boggles…
Urgh · 15 April 2025 at 23:14
Social scientist here.
I am so embarrassed for Cambridge. Because the university’s official “response” is the most stupid, numerically illiterate and vexatious reply I have ever seen.
There is not a single credible survey that would recode “don’t know” to “happy” as they suggest.
If US election polls did this, papers would report the % of Americans planning to vote for Trump at 20% (the amount who expressed this view including DKs in the sample).
Any journalist who published that as a headline story would rightly fired on the spot, for destroying their employer’s credibility as a serious news organisation.
If Cambridge has any hope of salvaging its own tattered reputation that is exactly what must now happen to the Cambridge staff who produced such a stupid response — and made the university a laughing stock in front of the entire world for their statistical illiteracy and stupidity.
Rose City · 15 April 2025 at 23:20
I would expect that among don’t knows, the true rate of dissatisfaction was closer to 100% than 76% ——– right?
I mean why else would someone who had filled in the rest of the survey hesitate before answering that item (unless they had a view they were afraid to express?)
Excam · 16 April 2025 at 01:24
“Just to update you” = patronising as fuck
“We are looking into the data” = why the fuck aren’t you looking into systemic staff abuse
Mobbed · 18 April 2025 at 19:55
“The third stage of genocide, after shaping perceptions among the population, then inflicting punishments and removing them from society, is triggered when leadership grants the populace permission to attack.
In Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison experiments, where research subjects were assigned roles as prison guards or prisoners, and Stanley Milgram’s 1963 social psychology experiments in which research subjects were instructed to administer what they (falsely) believed to be electric shocks on unsuspecting “learners,” the researchers found that ordinary humans are very susceptible to authority and conformity, and that many can easily become sadistic under certain conditions – conditions found not only in genocidal contexts, but organizational cultures as well.
These experiments have shown that if permitted to inflict pain by someone in a position of authority, and not held accountable for the consequences of their actions, humans will not only inflict pain on others, but they will continue to do so above and beyond what is necessary to satisfy the authority figures – and they will not stop until they are made to do so. Moreover, the participants showed little remorse for their aggression.
Zimbardo’s experiment, replicated in multiple variations over the decades since it was initially conducted, was used to explain why soldiers who tortured inmates at Abu Ghraib were not aberrant “bad apples,” as the military depicted them, but ordinary non-pathological people conforming to an environment where abusive behavior was permitted and expected.”
Mobbed · 21 April 2025 at 15:19
“Those closest to the target – in proximity as co-workers, subordinates, and friends, and in identity as members of the same social group such as race, gender, socio-economic class, nationality, age, sexuality or other group, especially if the group has legally protected status, will be the most valuable agents to those who seek a target’s elimination, and thus, they will be the most actively courted by management – behind closed doors.
They have intimate information about the targeted worker that can aid the exterminators. They are in fear and emotionally exhausted from the anguish of the tormented worker. If they turn against the worker, it legitimates the claim that the worker is unwanted and helps undermine any legal claims of discrimination against a whole class.
And once those closest to the targeted worker turn away, the worker is left without social support, making it even harder to withstand the daily torment. Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that if you are being mobbed that those closest to you might betray or hurt you. What I am telling you is that in almost every case I guarantee they will – and when they do, they will be the most damaging, and the most committed to your destruction.”