If you're looking for insults, you're in the wrong place, bud. Also why are our arguments pseudo and yours aren't? As noted before, this isn't reddit. We are going to critically analyze what you post without resorting to shit posts. Sorry that you are tired of it. Sorry that you don't think people are being honest with you -- I think plenty of people are being plenty honest with you about how your posts are perceived while also presenting their arguments. And to respond to your previous points: decoy questions are relevant to a survey because they help to filter out bogus answers and create more reputable research; response rate also gives you a realistic view of your data... a good response rate for a survey is approximately 10% and when you're already operating on a small pool of people, 10% is tiny, so reporting that you surveyed X number but received Y responses is critical to understanding the validity of your research; the questions are biased because you only get one side of the story (cheaters vs the cheated on).
ETA: I just reread everyone else's responses again and they are all personal. I would be happy to use this. They actually don't make any sweeping generalizations.
He's using the time-honored "deny that the other person is a competent human being argument", well tested and proved to be of good use. He falls back onto it when all else fails.
Sorry, I don't have infinite time and energy to argue with the intellectual equivalent of a dog. I explain my positions and I try to reply as patiently as I can, but even my patience has its limits. When people are being dumb and I'm getting bored, you can't expect me to keep spoonfeeding you ad nauseam. I suppose from now on, when someone makes some kind of pseudo-argument in response to one of my posts, I'll just call him an idiot and save myself time.
Actually, I've already been insulted in this thread, so I'd say this is the right place! Because yours don't make sense. How does asking a person "what planet are you on?" create more reputable research? 5000 or 500 are both small numbers from a statistical point of view, and I expect that if the difference was even bigger than that, the magazine wouldn't have reported the results in the first place. Yeah, but they got the side of the person who cheated. Are you saying that people are biased against themselves? This is what I mean when I say pseudo-arguments. Stuff that's meant to sound intelligent but is actually nonsense.Also why are our arguments pseudo and yours aren't?
And to respond to your previous points: decoy questions are relevant to a survey because they help to filter out bogus answers and create more reputable research
response rate also gives you a realistic view of your data... a good response rate for a survey is approximately 10% and when you're already operating on a small pool of people, 10% is tiny, so reporting that you surveyed X number but received Y responses is critical to understanding the validity of your research
the questions are biased because you only get one side of the story (cheaters vs the cheated on).
but why don't they make sense? you haven't alluded to it at all. as you said before, that is just an example. i'm referring to the use of decoy questions period. you said decoy questions are irrelevant; i said why they are not. sorry i don't understand what you mean when you talk about the numbers and publishing. 400 is also a small number but apparently that's enough for you to conclude that "a large majority of women" try to become pregnant without their partners knowledge. what i meant was that if you sent out 5000 surveys, and 500 people responded, you would say we surveyed 500 people; i think the average reader then reads that as 500 people responded in this way and thus is an accurate representation of a population. reporting the response rate (surveyed 5000 only 500 responded) then demonstrates the gap created by non respondents which indicates how reputable the information is. to go back to your example, one-third of 400 women surveyed said that they risked pregnancy. however, if more people responded (and since there is no report rate, we don't know how many people didn't respond) we would have totally different statistics. one-third of 400 is approx. 130, while 1/3 of 5000 is approx. 1666. another thing we've completely neglected is the demographics of the group interviewed. 400 community college students. i think your results would vary wildly if you took a more generalized survey. again i don't understand what you mean by biased against themselves. a good survey would present both questions (have you cheated and have you been cheated on). this comes back to the decoy questions. if i want to survey cheaters, i will also ask them whether they have been cheated on so they are more likely to answer honestly.
what exactly is nonsense? i think i have been very clear and tried to explain where you pointed out that you were confused.