Chuck Lam is at it again. He’s the guy that did that cool analysis of Facebook penetration and school prestige in Bay Area high schools. (I had a lot of fun replicating his results.) This time, he’s worked up a metric called “MySpace intensity” and is correlating it to the same metric of high school prestige used last time: GreatSchools.net ratings.
He arrived at this metric by dividing the number of MySpace profiles that claim a particular high school by the total number of students currently in that school according to GreatSchools.net. Since MySpace doesn’t make distinctions between current students and alumni, and since MySpace users have less of an incentive to list their high schools — MySpace has no networks — this metric is fuzzier than the Facebook penetration data he found.
Chuck’s data and my analysis, plus an analysis of Seattle-area schools after the jump.
| Bay Area Public High Schools | ||
|---|---|---|
| School | MySpace intensity | GreatSchools Rating |
| Lowell | 0.95 | 10 |
| Abraham Lincoln | 1.02 | 8 |
| School of the Arts | 0.64 | 7 |
| George Washington | 1.09 | 7 |
| Balboa | 1.53 | 6 |
| Wallenberg | 1.01 | 6 |
| Phillip Burton | 1.16 | 6 |
| Thurgood Marshall | 1.19 | 5 |
| Mission | 1.33 | 4 |
| ISA | 1.2 | 4 |
| Independence High | 0.81 | 4 |
With this data set, we see a slightly negative Pearson correlation between high school prestige and MySpace intensity (r= -0.31). This means that as school rating goes down, MySpace intensity goes up. Here’s how that looks on a scatterplot:
The low correlation could be explained by the fuzzinesss of the metric or the size of the sample. I decided to test the hypothesized MySpace intensity/school prestige relationship with a larger sample of Seattle High Schools. I looked only at schools that had an official rating on GreatSchools.net and an available population on MySpace.
Here’s my data:
| Seattle Area High Schools | ||
|---|---|---|
| High School | MySpace Intensity | Greatschools Rating |
| Roosevelt High School | 1.23 | 10 |
| The Center School | 0.39 | 10 |
| Ballard High School | 1.20 | 9 |
| Garfield High School | 1.38 | 9 |
| Nathan Hale High School | 1.15 | 9 |
| Nova | 1.18 | 7 |
| Ingraham High School | 1.23 | 6 |
| West Seattle High School | 1.43 | 6 |
| Franklin High School | 1.62 | 5 |
| Highline Senior High School | 0.57 | 4 |
| Summit | 1.27 | 4 |
| Chief Sealth | 1.62 | 3 |
| Evergreen Senior High School | 1.62 | 3 |
| Sealth High School | 1.27 | 3 |
| Seattle Academy | 0.25 | 3 |
| Cleveland High School | 1.31 | 2 |
| Rainier Beach High School | 1.94 | 2 |
I found a similarly slight negative correlation of r=-0.22. Here’s how that looks on a scatterplot:
After looking at this data, I’m not satisfied. I really want to see a comparison of actual MySpace penetration and traditional metrics of school prestige like test scores, number of kids on subsidized lunch and college matriculation rates. Facebook penetration is a very precise metric, but MySpace intensity — while a brilliant idea — is much too imprecise to give a very clear picture.
To top it off, GreatSchools.net ratings aren’t available for all the schools in the Seattle area.
Does anyone know of a major metropolitan area where a researcher has collected precise MySpace penetration data?
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