Dear Editor,
I believe that Dr Derrick Aarons has done himself and your newspaper a great disservice by his claim, in his piece 'Varying sexual identities' in the Sunday Observer of August 2, 2015, that in any given population only 10 per cent of the people are exclusively heterosexual.
Sexual orientation embraces attraction, identity and behaviour; one is said to be homosexual if one has accepted the identity.
Researchers Anjani Chandra, PhD; William D Mosher, PhD; and Casey Copen, PhD, from the Division of Vital Statistics, at the National Center for Health Statistics; and Catlainn Sionean, PhD, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, have published data on sexual attraction in Americans, and their conclusions are vastly different from the claims of Dr Aarons. Their data was collected through in-person interviews with a national sample of 13,495 males and females in the household population of the United States, using audio computer-assisted self interviewing, in which the respondent enters his or her own answers into the computer without telling them to an interviewer. The overall response rate for the 2006-2008 was 75 per cent of individuals being exclusive. Their research was published in 2011 in the article 'Sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and sexual identity in the United States: data from the 2006-2008'.
The authors found that, among men, more than 90 per cent are attracted to women exclusively. Among women, more than 80 per cent are attracted to men exclusively. The findings were similar to those of a previous study done in the USA in 2002, and those obtained by Canadian researchers.
Secondly, in 2014, Dahlhamer et al published the article 'Sexual orientation in the 2013 national health interview survey: A quality assessment'. They found that "96.6 per cent of adults identified as straight, 1.6 per cent identified as gay/lesbian, and 0.7 per cent identified as bisexual. The remaining 1.1 per cent of adults identified as "something else", stating "I don't know the answer," or refused to answer. Please see: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr036.pdf
These two articles indicate that, in the USA, the vast majority of people have heterosexual attraction and identify not with the 10 per cent claimed by Dr Aarons.
One wonders why Dr Aarons chose to cite flawed "research" of some seven decades ago as a basis for his argument.
Dr Wayne West
Kingston 6
wayne_west@hotmail.com
Flawed statistics, Dr Aarons
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I believe that Dr Derrick Aarons has done himself and your newspaper a great disservice by his claim, in his piece 'Varying sexual identities' in the Sunday Observer of August 2, 2015, that in any given population only 10 per cent of the people are exclusively heterosexual.
Sexual orientation embraces attraction, identity and behaviour; one is said to be homosexual if one has accepted the identity.
Researchers Anjani Chandra, PhD; William D Mosher, PhD; and Casey Copen, PhD, from the Division of Vital Statistics, at the National Center for Health Statistics; and Catlainn Sionean, PhD, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, have published data on sexual attraction in Americans, and their conclusions are vastly different from the claims of Dr Aarons. Their data was collected through in-person interviews with a national sample of 13,495 males and females in the household population of the United States, using audio computer-assisted self interviewing, in which the respondent enters his or her own answers into the computer without telling them to an interviewer. The overall response rate for the 2006-2008 was 75 per cent of individuals being exclusive. Their research was published in 2011 in the article 'Sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and sexual identity in the United States: data from the 2006-2008'.
The authors found that, among men, more than 90 per cent are attracted to women exclusively. Among women, more than 80 per cent are attracted to men exclusively. The findings were similar to those of a previous study done in the USA in 2002, and those obtained by Canadian researchers.
Secondly, in 2014, Dahlhamer et al published the article 'Sexual orientation in the 2013 national health interview survey: A quality assessment'. They found that "96.6 per cent of adults identified as straight, 1.6 per cent identified as gay/lesbian, and 0.7 per cent identified as bisexual. The remaining 1.1 per cent of adults identified as "something else", stating "I don't know the answer," or refused to answer. Please see: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr036.pdf
These two articles indicate that, in the USA, the vast majority of people have heterosexual attraction and identify not with the 10 per cent claimed by Dr Aarons.
One wonders why Dr Aarons chose to cite flawed "research" of some seven decades ago as a basis for his argument.
Dr Wayne West
Kingston 6
wayne_west@hotmail.com
Flawed statistics, Dr Aarons
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