Planetarion Forums - View Single Post - Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex

Nodrog · 2 Jan 2008, 15:27

I'm not sure how any of the findings are anything other than obvious.

Also you can probably argue for a significant discrepancy between people's self-professed motivations for carrying out an act, and the real reasons why theyre doing it. The fact that none of the respondants apparently cited social expectations as a factor gives an indication of how big a grain of salt the results should be taken with. There are a lot of methodological problems with trying to find out why someone does something by simply asking them.

edit: Theres a copy of the paper here. The methodology seems dubious; theyve made no attempt at randomly selecting their population and have apparently used mainly undergrad/graduate students which hardly gives a fair reflection of society (its going to be heavily skewed towards people who are young, middle class, and white). Theyve also solicited their responses by asking the question "Please list all the reasons you can think of why you or someone else you have known has engaged in sexual intercourse in the past" so theres no distinction in the answers between the reasons people have gave for their own sexual practices, and random thinks which they have thought up to 'explain' why they friends are having sex. I really have no idea what the point of this research is meant to be or how it contributes to any wider understanding of sexual behavior; it seems like some yet another postivist sociology study to churn out a journal paper and get a bit of media coverage, but then I'm pretty cynical towards this sort of thing :/ I mean the whole paper boils down to "people have sex for lots of different reasons".

2 Jan 2008, 15:27	#2
Nodrog Registered User Join Date: Jun 2000 Posts: 8,476	Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex I'm not sure how any of the findings are anything other than obvious. Also you can probably argue for a significant discrepancy between people's self-professed motivations for carrying out an act, and the real reasons why theyre doing it. The fact that none of the respondants apparently cited social expectations as a factor gives an indication of how big a grain of salt the results should be taken with. There are a lot of methodological problems with trying to find out why someone does something by simply asking them. edit: Theres a copy of the paper here. The methodology seems dubious; theyve made no attempt at randomly selecting their population and have apparently used mainly undergrad/graduate students which hardly gives a fair reflection of society (its going to be heavily skewed towards people who are young, middle class, and white). Theyve also solicited their responses by asking the question "Please list all the reasons you can think of why you or someone else you have known has engaged in sexual intercourse in the past" so theres no distinction in the answers between the reasons people have gave for their own sexual practices, and random thinks which they have thought up to 'explain' why they friends are having sex. I really have no idea what the point of this research is meant to be or how it contributes to any wider understanding of sexual behavior; it seems like some yet another postivist sociology study to churn out a journal paper and get a bit of media coverage, but then I'm pretty cynical towards this sort of thing :/ I mean the whole paper boils down to "people have sex for lots of different reasons". Last edited by Nodrog; 2 Jan 2008 at 15:52.