Quote:
Quote by: Epistemologist  Well, the sample could have been just college students, for instance, and that is one possible confounding variable. As I said before, unless we know more about the data collection methods and hypothesis test, then the conclusion is rather specious. I'm just saying. There are some reliable polls, but without more information I guess this one's reliability is questionable. |
Then, of course, there's the number of people sampled - 38,000 and the vast majority of them women. There are approximately 300,000,000 Americans, of which 38,000 is significantly less than one percent. Further, women only comprise about 51 percent of the American population while the study questioned 33,000 out of 38,000 (significantly more than 51 percent of the people questioned). Consider me stubborn, pig-headed or whatever but I refuse to accept the notion that sampling significantly less than one percent of the entire American population can produce valid information about 95 percent of the entire American population. Then, of course, one has to also take into consideration the percentage of the American population that is pre-pubescent or otherwise theoretically incapable of "pre-marital sex."