these go to eleven

originally posted April 15, 2007

Because I study psychometrics and stuff, I often find myself doing psycho-me-tricky things. Tonight I am doing some work with a scale that measures sexual behaviors and attitudes. This means questions about the number of one-night-stands you've had, the degree to which you are okay with casual sex, etc. I know – this is hot, edgy, sexy work. I've run into a problem, though. There is an item that asks how often you fantasize about having sex with someone other than your current partner. There is a response scale that ranges from '0'( never) to '7' (at least once a day). You get the idea. It also seems that there are a number of males who have answered '9' for this item. No, this is not a code meant to tell me they left the item blank. This is a response. They filled in a bubble that was not represented on the response scale, because these guys think about sex with someone other than their current partner SO OFTEN that they can't BE constrained by my PIDDLY LITTLE RESPONSE SCALE! Mind you, '9' is even greater than '8', and '8' wasn't an option EITHER!! Okay. Breathe. And for them to just buck the system like that, and get in the way of SCIENCE (I mean "science"), just so they can communicate to me on the intro psych survey that they think about having sex with someone other than their current partner MORE THAN AT LEAST ONCE A DAY. TWO MORE!! Perhaps all this thinking about sex explains why there are 78 males who responded '4' to an item concerning whether you consider yourself a feminist. You know what '4' is? I don't know what a feminist is. WHAT? You DON'T? And you are in COLLEGE? Okay, perhaps this is a problem of language. On the other hand, perhaps this is NOT a problem of language. I'm leaning towards that. Because you know what? Some other guy responded '6'. And guess what? Not a response option. He must REALLY not know what a feminist is.

Oh, you men.