I see it as a very real possibility that there is a "C" leading to both increased TV consumption and developmental challenges, namely, poor parenting.
There are statistical tools that can be used to control for confounding variables, unfortunately they are not always used correctly. Often a study in psychology relies on methodology to control for confounding variables, using only a chi-squared test (or similar) as their statistical measure. In many of these cases, the data is screaming for the use of a marginally more complex statistical method. A simple linear regression attempting to control for omitted variable bias would be a great improvement in many cases.
When you're making a claim about causation, there is certainly more required than simply statistical evidence of correlation. Even if some of these studies did more work on controlling for omitted variable bias, you would never know it from reading this article and for that reason should take it with a grain of salt.
I see it as a very real possibility that there is a "C" leading to both increased TV consumption and developmental challenges, namely, poor parenting.
There are statistical tools that can be used to control for confounding variables, unfortunately they are not always used correctly. Often a study in psychology relies on methodology to control for confounding variables, using only a chi-squared test (or similar) as their statistical measure. In many of these cases, the data is screaming for the use of a marginally more complex statistical method. A simple linear regression attempting to control for omitted variable bias would be a great improvement in many cases.
When you're making a claim about causation, there is certainly more required than simply statistical evidence of correlation. Even if some of these studies did more work on controlling for omitted variable bias, you would never know it from reading this article and for that reason should take it with a grain of salt.