The Complementary Virtues of Qualitative and Quantitative Research: Reply to Altheide

Abstract

Before I can comment on Professor Altheide's remarks, some background information will be needed. In a series of papers in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and in Science I presented evidence suggesting that publicized suicide stories trigger imitative suicides, some of which are misclassified as accidents (Phillips, a, b, c, d, e; Bollen and Phillips). These papers showed that: (1) U.S. suicides rise significantly just after publicized suicide stories (e.g., that of Marilyn Monroe). (2) Fatal automobile accidents also increase just after publicized suicide stories. (3) Sincle-car accidents increase more than other types of accidents. (4) The drivers in these single-car accidents are unusually similar to the person described in the suicide story, but passengers in these accidents are not similar to the person described in the suicide story. (5) The more publicity given to the suicide story, the greater the increase in suicides and the greater the increase in motor vehicle accidents. (6) The increase in suicides and motor vehicle accidents occurs primarily in the geographic areas where the suicide story is publicized. These findings are based on a systematic survey of more than 80,000 suicide and accident statistics. In follow-up papers in Science and in Social Forces I showed that these findings for suicides and motor vehicle accidents also hold for airplane accidents. I examined 172 airplane accidents (not 16 as Dr. Altheide claims) and showed that: (7) U.S. private plane crashes increase significantly just after publicized murder-suicide stories. (8) The greater the publicity devoted to the murder-suicide story, the greater the increase in private plane crashes. (9) The increase in plane crashes occurs primarily in the geographic areas where the murder-suicide story is publicized. These findings hold not only for non-commercial but also for commercial plane crashes. Specifically, (10) U.S. commercial plane crashes increase significantly just after publicized murder-suicide stories. (11) The greater the publicity devoted to the murder-suicide story, the greater the increase in commercial plane crash fatalities just afterwards. All of these eleven findings are statistically significant and persist after one corrects for seasonal fluctuations in the data and for trends over time. Alternative explanations for the findings were assessed. At present,