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From: john@cisden.UUCP (John Woolley)
Newsgroups: net.social
Subject: Statistics on sexuality
Message-ID: <405@cisden.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Jan-86 13:43:12 EST
Article-I.D.: cisden.405
Posted: Wed Jan 15 13:43:12 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Jan-86 04:09:49 EST
References: <5468@cca.UUCP> <5570@cca.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@cisden.UUCP (John Woolley)
Organization: ConTel Information Systems, Denver
Lines: 43
Summary: Grossly unreliable

In article <5570@cca.UUCP> diego@cca.UUCP (Diego Gonzalez) writes:
>             I promised you some better statistical information if I
>        could find it on the frequency of extra-marital relationships
>        among men.  According to the breakdown on page 1096 of "The Hite
>        Report on Male Sexuality" (Knopf, 1981), here are the figures.

and

In article <671@tektools.UUCP> barbaraz@tektools.UUCP (Barbara Zanzig) writes:
>They [Ladies' Home Journal] report results of a reader poll including this question, to which
>12,000 women responded (but consider the source).  The summary said
>that 36% of respondents had had an extramarital affair.

It seems to me this sort of statistic is meaningless.  First, and most
important, the survey depends on people's telling the truth.  But they
don't.

Second, the Ladies' Home Journal survey is a survey of people who read
LHJ, hardly a cross-section of women in general.  (National Inquirer did
a reader survey a few years ago and found that the most popular TV show
was "Lawrence Welk"!)

Third, both surveys have incredibly skewed samples for another reason:
they depend on getting people to answer questions about things people
don't usually answer questions about.  It would really surprise me not
to find some correlation between "Is the subject willing to answer intimate
questions for a survey?" and "Does the subject engage in sex outside of
marriage?"

I don't claim to guess which way the correlation would go.  Maybe folks
who are faithful tend to be reserved about talking about it.  Maybe
they're proud of it and want to boast.  Maybe lots of respondents to
the surveys wanted to skew the results to fit their apprehensions of
what they'd like society to be like, or what they think other people
think it's like, or whatever.  Maybe people answer according to how they
wish they had behaved, rather than how they did.  Maybe, maybe...

So let's not draw any conclusions about sexual practices from such
surveys.
-- 
				Peace and Good!,
				      Fr. John Woolley
"Compared to what I have seen, all that I have written is straw." -- St. Thomas