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> charlesd@tekig4.UUCP (Charles Davis)
> (questionaire by Carmen Stukas, R.N., M.A)

Is the first part of the questionaire in the referenced posting really
state-of-the-art in sexual attitude surveys?  This first part certainly
has the "flavor" of being a "standard attitude survey".  If it is a
standard survey, then I'm disappointed in the current state of the art,
in particular the phrasings of the questions.  For example:

> 12. A woman will only respect a man who will
> lay down the law to her.

Does this mean all women?  Most women?  Some women?  A few women?  Does
it mean all the time?  Often?  Sometimes?  Rarely?  And just what is
this "lay down the law" stuff?  Does it involve physical coersion?
Verbal abuse?  "Friendly" persuasion only?  Threats?  Promises?  What's
the deal here?  This could fairly easily be taken to mean anything from
"some women respect honest men over dishonest men" to "all women respect
only those men who physically abuse them", and quite a few tangential
possibilities in between.

I found (especially in the first part of the questionaire, dealing with
"attitudes"), I could rarely understand what the statements were getting
at, and thus (to put it mildly) had some difficulty in saying how much I
"agreed" with them.  I have been told in the past that such ambiguities
and mushy meanings are irrelevant in degree-of-agreement surveys,
because the various interpretations "cancel out", and anyhow, answer
sets of "test populations" "correlate well" with other measures, so it
must be measuring something like what was intended.  Hogwash, I say.
Just what does this mish-mash measure, anyhow?  Does it measure sexual
attitudes, or just measure what the respondents think the ambiguous
questions mean?

Is it any wonder I take survey results with a metric ton or so of salt?
(Given the number of ambiguous surveys running around, this practice
doesn't help my BP, I can tell you!) Don't others of you find this sort
of survey intriguing, and would just love to participate, but can't make
heads nor tails of the questions?  Hmmmmm?

--
"Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchmen.  When you tell them
 something, they translate it into their own language, and
 right away it is something completely different."
                                --- Goethe

(Strangely enough, the above also applies to computer scientists.)
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw