Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!laura From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Re: Virginity Paper Revisited Message-ID: <4993@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Thu, 31-Jan-85 01:33:38 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.4993 Posted: Thu Jan 31 01:33:38 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 31-Jan-85 01:33:38 EST References: <7226@watrose.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 141 Hi there. I think that cjsgro (who should be C Gro if the Waterloo naming rules haven't changed) is going to need some help in writing this survey. Writing surveys is hard work. It is like designing an exeriment for a Masters Thesis ---- teh hard part is designing an experiment that your thesis committee will accept, the easy part is doing it and analysing the results. The virginity poll needs some work, but hey, Canada didn't even make it as a place in the net.singles survey... The paper may be a little crocked if some of these aren't fixed. (Then again, it may not be a rigourous paper at all, in which case all of this doesn't matter.) At any rate, here are some criticisms of the survey. I hope they are taken constructively. VIRGINITY POLL 1) What sex are you? (Hmm. Sunny might have trouble with this one, but most people are going to find this one just fine.) 2) How old are you? 3) Are you a) married? b) engaged? c) not engaged but in a serious relationship? d) not in a serious relationship? (This is what a thesis committee calls ``vague''. It doesn't quite define what a ``serious relationship'' is, so makes it a little tough to answer. it also leaves some people in limbo as to what they should answer -- people who are divorced, separated and waiting for the divorce to come in, and involved in more than one serious relationship come immediately to mind. From the rest of the survey I get the impression that ``serious relationship'' is one in which you either have sex, or think about having sex but don't for some reason or other. If this is what you mean, then you had better come out and say it. Of course, you will then eliminate the people who are involved in not-very-serious sexual relations. If you *know* that you are eliminating them, fine. Otherwise you are skewing your results...of course, this readership is already skewed, so this may not actually matter all that much.) 4) Have you ever been: a) in a serious relationship? b) married? 5) Have you ever had sexual intercourse? 6) If you haven't had sexual intercourse, is the reason that you haven't because a) you believe that it is wrong outside of marriage. b) you believe that it is wrong if two people are not strongly in love. c) it is too risky (i.e. pregnancy). d) you haven't had the opportunity. e) other (specify). (You have to define ``rating'' here -- do you mean if you feel that it is both wrong outside of marriage and you haven't had the opportunity, but you think that the first reason is more important you should rank the first as 1 and the second as 2, or should you rank the first as 10 and the second as 1 because you think the first reason is 10X as important?) 7a) If you have had sexual intercourse, how old and in what stage of your education were you when you first had sexual intercourse? (This question implies a continuum of education to be at a stage in. This sort of question appears on lots of Canadian government surveys, so don't feel bad about it, but it really freaks out people who do things like drifting in and out of university, take a few courses, and don't really work on a degree at all....what about the people who went to work for years between high school and university? or between bachelors and grad work? ) b) What circumstances was it under? a) At own or partner's place when parents were gone. b) At own or partner's place when parents were there. c) At own or partner's place; didn't live with parents. d) At a party or other social gathering (specify). f) In a car. g) In a motel room. h) Other (specify). (You had better specify whose parents, if you think that this is important. The person who first made love at his partner's place, while he was living with his parents and his partner was *not* (a fairly large number, I would suspect) are going to find it hard to figure out how to answer this one.) c) Was it a positive or negative experience for you? d) Was it a positive or negative experience for your partner? e) Do you wish that you had started a) earlier? b) when you did? c) later? d) upon marriage? (To be fair, you should include ``before marriage'' here. Also, it assumes that all other things are equal, which is a rather dangerous assumption to make. Some people are going to answer ``when you did'' on the assumption that they hadn't met their partner earlier, and others are going to answer ``earlier'' on the assumption that you meant ``assuming that they met their partner earlier''. Probably you will want to group these people together, but this isn't what you are going to get. You left out the people who wish that they had never had sex, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, you left out the people who really think that the time that they started to have sex was irrelevant and don't have any wishes at all in the matter with respect to time.) f) If you could go back and change the occurrence of your first sexual intercourse, would you have? Why or why not? 8) Other comments. 9) Do you want me to post a summary to the net? * * * * * * * * * I hope you didn't mind this. Also, you have left a very large hole here for people whose first sexual experience was rape, but this may be diliberate. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura