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Notification
« Communication, Anyone? | Main | It's summer! »
18 May 2006
Reactions To The Virginity Pledge Study
Drew Thomas
Harvard School of Public Health doctoral candidate Janet Rosenbaum has been in the news lately, following the publication of her study of virginity pledges in the American Journal of Public Health, as well as her recent IQSS seminar. (Full disclosure: Janet is a friend of mine. I'll address her as Ms. Rosenbaum for this entry.) Since it's certainly a hot topic, it's no surprise how much attention her findings have received; first, the big news agencies picked it up, then the blogosphere took their shift - mainly over the "controversy" resulting from the study. (See pandagon.net for an example.)
But I think the more relevant part of the whole debate is the point Ms. Rosenbaum was trying to make about surveys and self-reporting: we use these data to make broad, sweeping conclusions on social phenomena, and while they are the best we have, they aren't up to the best standard we could achieve.
Posted by Andrew C. Thomas at May 18, 2006 6:04 AM
Comments
You and Janet ("Ms. Rosenbaum") are absolutely right. Very few people have the guts and/or the technical know how to give a decent critique of the rampant reliance on survey data for making extremely broad and sweeping societal generalizations. Most of the time the problem stems from the lack of any theory prior to empirical testing. Many researchers will oftentimes try to develop a theory AFTER they have collected data and the ones that do have strong theories prior to data collection tend to draw big conclusions from small connections. Perhaps if this trend continues better survey methods will be developed or narrower questions will be asked. Either way, a tougher critique on surveys will lead to the result most social scientists (unconsciously at least) want anyway: the truth.
Posted by: Jason at May 18, 2006 9:54 PM