From: carroll@dori.cis.udel.edu (Mark C. Carroll)
Subject: Re: pounding the "10%" figure into the ground: Nature, 12/3/92
Organization: University of Delaware, Newark
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 19:17:54 GMT

In article <13627@optilink.COM> cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>
>See "AIDS and sexual behavior in France" in the December 3, 1992
>_Nature_.  The survey questioned 20,055 people aged 18-69.  The
>survey asked about "at least one occurrence of intercourse with
>a person of the same sex during their lifetime", in the past 5 
>years, and in the past year.  The percentages reported were:
>
>           men       women
>lifetime   4.1%      2.6%
>past 5 yrs 1.4%      0.4%
>past year  1.1%      0.3%
>
>This is higher than the 3.3% number for men cited by Masters, Johnson,
>& Kolodny, but roughly in line with the 2.4% homosexual/bisexual
>identification from exit polling in this year's election.


Verbatim from my notes in "Statistical Methods in Political Science", a class
I took at Rutgers during the fall semester of 1989:

	Whenever considering information generated by a survey, the
	following influences may affect the validity of information
	discovered by the survey:

	1> Precise phrasings of the questions: questions may be worded
	  in a way that slants the results towards the bias of the
	  researcher.

	2> Survey conditions: the same survey will generate different
	  answers when performed once through random mailings and once
	  through public interviews.

	3> Social influences: many interviewees will not answer questions
	  truthfully (particularly under public survey conditions, ie
	  interviews with earshot of other interviewees), when the truthful
          answer to the questions places a social stigma on the interviewee.

Now, we don't know the precise phrasing of the question. Since it's
published in a reputable journal, that means that it is fairly likely
that the phrasing wasn't outrageously slanted. 

On the other hand: what was the survey condition? In the case of
querying people at exit polls, you're talking about face-to-face
interviews within earshot of others. That's the *worst* survey
condition to ask a question about homosexuality, which carries a very
strong social stigma. We don't know about the survey condition of the
french study, because you haven't told us.

Finally, social influences. Homosexuality carries a strong social
stigma. No closeted gay person is going to admit to being gay in a
survey - they're in the closet because they want to hide it. 

Now, skipping to a slightly different point: You define homosexual as
anyone who has _ever_ had sexual contact with a member of their own
sex. Now, in your posting about the "gay child molester with aids",
that person would have _not_ been considered as gay under the survey
you quote, if it has been taken 5 years ago. But you _clearly_
consider him to be a homosexual. Therefore, this study obviously
doesn't measure what YOU mean by gay.

	<MC> 
-- 
|| Mark Craig Carroll: <MC>     ||"If love remains
|| Univ of Delaware, Dept of CIS|| Though everything is lost
|| Grad Student/Labstaff Hacker || We will pay the price
|| carroll@udel.edu             || But we will not count the cost" -Neil Peart
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