Are health surveys completely out of touch with reality or have I (and just about everyone else I know) crossed the line?

In a recent article in the NYT (see link) about the gentrification of the term "slut" an American health study was quoted as saying that the median number of sexual partners for men aged 30-44 is five to six and for women of the same age group is four.



[Okay, so I was really hoping to throw a little Salt n'Pepa here, but no can do. I couldn't even get the original version of this tune by James...]

I suppose I could begin by questioning the use of medians in this situation as opposed to means. In all honesty, I would rarely state a median without also listing the range of responses - the median was 4, but the range was 0 to 468, for example. But that's just me as a graduate school educated biostatistician with 10 years of experience. Far be it for me to tell the New York Times how to interpret survey results....

But being the person I am, and also appearing to be above the median, like every other woman I know (excluding my mother and other older female relatives and friends that I know better than to survey because I REALLY don't want to know), which I guess makes me some sort of slut ~ I always figured being able to keep it on one hand made you a complete sexual failure, but whatever...

I went back to the source. The National Center for Health Statistics. I cannot, for my life, figure out where the NYT got their numbers. And going back to the questionnaire, it doesn't even appear that participants were asked the number of lifetime partners. They were just asked the number of partners in the last 12 months. Well, doesn't that just put a whole new spin on the promiscuity of Americans????

It no longer makes me wonder if they sampled directly from Utah or strictly from Baptist revivalist weekend retreats.

It does just go to show. Don't believe ever statistic quoted in the news. As the ex-chief of NCHS once said (and I'm paraphrasing a little) first get your numbers straight, then you can manipulate them in any way you please.

So much for the sanctity of science....