How prevalent is public sex? A 2006 online survey of nearly 80,000 men and women, most of whom were involved in monogamous relationships, found that 22 percent had had sex in some kind of public venue.Hmmm. How much you want to be that that is a complete bullshit statistic?
An "online survey" of nearly 80,000 men and women, "most of whom were involved in monogamous relationships." Most likely, a magazine like Maxim or FHM did this survey (I'm just guessing because it's not listed in the article as far as I can tell). Readers were probably invited to answer a survey, and around 80,000 did so. I have no doubt that 22% said that they'd had sex in a public, but that is a far cry from saying that 22% of some population has had sex in public. If I'm right, and a somewhat trashy magazine did this survey, then it's rife with selection bias. Selection of people who read the magazine (already skewed towards more promiscuous, if I had to guess). Selection of people who then chose to answer the survey (even more skewed). You end up with basically a statistic that could've come straight out of the Kinsey Report.
Remember, large sample sizes mean absolutely nothing if the procedure to collect the data isn't random. We might say that 22% of the magazine's readers have had sex in public (even that is doubtful, but it's better than the way the writer presents it, which is open ended and invites the reader to think 22% of Americans have had sex in public). I looked in my copy of The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United State by Laumann, Gagnon, Michael and Michaels, which explores the famous 'sex survey' done by NORC in the early 1990s. I can't find anything yet about sex in public, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that when I do find a statistic on it, it'll be far, far lower than 22%.
Update: It was a survey conducted by MSNBC and Elle magazine. Exactly as I thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment