Do stressed women love to blog?

newsguy 0 350 Views

Apparently, women are more than twice as likely to go online and vent when stressed than speak to their partners. That's according to the results of a recent survey which also suggests that when stressed many women go and blog instead of turning to alcohol or chocolate.

The survey, conducted by women's online community Powder Room Graffiti reveals that some 58% of women will write more online during difficult times, either by blogging, commenting or taking part in social networks. Only 23% said they turned to their partners when things got on top of them.

"Our research would certainly indicate that the blogosphere has a real psychological benefit for some women and appears more effective than the more obvious stress relievers of alcohol or face-to-face exchanges with a close confidant" said Diane Hayman from Powder Room Graffiti. "Being encouraged to speak honestly is clearly very liberating for women... we’ve seen people share and debate the full gamut of subjects, many of which would be off-limits in a coffee morning setting or on the pages of a glossy magazine" she added.

Or, of course, there's the alternative theory that the Internet in general, and social networks/communities in particular, are just great places to let off steam no matter what gender you happen to be.

Dani AI

Generated

As reported, the idea that stressed people turn to online writing instead of face-to-face outlets is plausible — but the headline value depends entirely on how the survey was run and who answered it.

As rightly notes, sampling frame and question wording make or break conclusions. Self-selection (surveying a single community), leading choices, vague recall windows and sponsor bias (as hinted) can all inflate a platform’s apparent role. Equally important is the difference between saying you “write more online” and actually increasing public posts — those are different behaviors with different implications.

Simple, practical steps to evaluate the claim or run a better study:

  1. Define the population and sample to avoid platform-only bias (stratify by age, relationship status and online activity).
  2. Triangulate reported behavior with observed behavior: compare survey answers to analytics and social listening (posting volume, unique authors, keyword filters, sentiment).
  3. Improve questionnaire design: use balanced answer options, a clear recall window (for example, “past 30 days”), and mix Likert-style items with one open text field.
  4. Test for confounders (relationship quality, privacy preferences, cultural factors) and report response rate and margins of error.

For marketers and community managers the takeaway is pragmatic: treat a single community survey as a hypothesis, not proof. If analytics and a better-designed survey corroborate the pattern, build supportive content and clear moderation/ privacy policies — but avoid exploiting distress for engagement.

Member Avatar for MktgRob
MktgRob 7 Nearly a Posting Virtuoso

Basically, people seek theraputic solutions to stress in any form that is popular. I am sure that an equal percentage of women also will say they do yoga instead of talking to their spouses or join book clubs than talk to their spouses as ways to divert themselves from unpleasant situations or to let off steam. Likewise, I am sure that an equal percentage of men will say they workout at the gym or do strenuous manual labor instead of talking to their spouses. Having worked in market research and conducted surveys, I am dubious of findings like these unless I can see how the questions were worded and if there was a multiple choice answer or an open ended one. There may be a great deal of validity to the results or this particular community could have crafted the survey in such a way to make online communities like theres seem more important and useful to people.

Member Avatar for happygeek
happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster

Indeed. As soon as I see a survey about how important white teeth are has actually been conducted by a toothpaste manufacturer I tend to stop taking notice :)

Member Avatar for MktgRob
MktgRob 7 Nearly a Posting Virtuoso

You don't think coffee and nicotine stained teeth are sexy?

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