Saturday, December 23, 2006

Re: More than 9 out of 10 report having had premarital sex

I was able to find out that the current ongoing study (cycle 6) they are doing is by randomly selecting homes and sending interviewers from the U of Michigan to ask the questions on record the answers. They said the sample homes were "scientifically" selected. See http://www.publichealthreports.org/userfiles/122_1/12_PHR122-1_73-78.pdf and http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm .

I was not able to find information about how the previous studies were conducted, other than they were done under the the control of the CDC.

Can you shed more light on the previous thee previous surveys that this study was based on?

On 12/22/06, <> wrote:

Articles such as this raise my level of cynicism about journalists. I
never see a caveat qualifying the results of the study in any way. In
this case, the article makes no mention of the fact that the study
relies on results from individuals voluntarily participating in a survey
on sexual behavior.

In the first place, I assume that such a discussion would tend to
attract more respondents likely to have exactly the background of sexual
experience the author represents as "normative". The study got exactly
the answers the author solicited, by asking the right questions. People
who had more reserved feelings about personal sexual experiences would
be less likely accept an invitation to talk openly about sex and sexuality.

Secondly, the author neglects to mention the first axiom of research in
such areas, which is that everyone lies about sex.

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