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STORY THIS WEEK: SEX, DRUGS, AND CHARLES DARWIN:
A Non-Traditional Look at Public Opinion
Sex in America: The CDC conducts an annual survey of sexual behavior, attraction, and identity among people ages 15-44. Note: it is extremely important to keep social desirability in mind in reading these results, either in under- or over-reporting sexual activity.
Among the most interesting findings:
· 60.3% of females age 15-17 and 52.4% of males age 15-17 reported having never had sexual contact with another person (defined as oral, anal, or vaginal sex).
· 1% of females and 1.8% of males 30-44 years old reported never having had sexual contact with another person.
· The median female 15-44 reports having had 3.3 sexual partners in her lifetime, and the median male reports having had 5.6 in theirs.
·4.6% of married men reported having multiple sexual partners in the last 12 months, including 1.3% who reported having four or more partners over that span. 2.8% and 0.6% of women reported 2+ and 4+ sexual partners respectively.
· 11.2% of females and 6.2% of males 15-44 report having had sexual contact with a partner of the same sex in their lifetimes.
Sports polling: The divides in political polling are of course nowhere near as intense and entrenched as polling from the world of sports. Some recent activity in sports polling:
· Ahead of the 2011 Super Bowl, Marist found that 74% of people watch the Super Bowl for the game, (including 84% of women and 63% of men).
· Seton Hall reports that people think by a 49%-23% margin, the NFL labor dispute will be resolved in time for next season.
· As of June 2010, Michael Vick was named the most disliked person in sports by people, followed by Al Davis, Ben Roethlisberger, and Tiger Woods.
· Derek Jeter was called the most overrated baseball player by his peers in a 2009 survey of Major League Baseball players. No word on changes in this number since Jeter signed a contract that guarantees him $51 million dollars in the next three years.
Crazy kids and their cell phones and computers: For those of you receiving email service under a rock, we report that the public continues to adopt new technology at a breathtaking pace. A couple findings:
· Pew finds that 85% of adults own cell phones. This number was 65% in November, 2004 and includes more than 92% of adults under 46 and 48% of adults over 75 years old.
o More than three quarters of those cell phone owners take pictures with their cameras, and 72% send and receive text messages, the two most popular cell phone activities besides talking.
o As of the first half of 2010, the CDC estimated that 26.6% of households only had cellphones and were no longer reachable by landline telephone, compared to only 12.9% that were reachable by only cellphone and not by landline.
· Also according to Pew: 47% of adults own an iPod or other MP3 player, compared to 11% in January 2005.
· More people own desktop computers (59%) than laptops (52%), but among 18-34 year olds that trend is reversed, as 70% own laptops and only 57% own desktops. The trend is also unsurprisingly towards laptops: in 2006 less than 30% of people had laptops while almost 70% had desktops.
· 8% of people 65-74 years old (and 3% 75 or older) own a video game system.
Only half of Americans don't think they are good at sleeping? Only 42% of adults age 25-55 call themselves "great sleepers", according to the National Sleep Foundation, who we assume is on the case. Other facts about people's bedtime routines:
· The average American's nightly slumber dropped from 7 hours in 2001 to 6.7 hours in 2009.
· Also according to the National Sleep Foundation, children from age 3 months to 5th grade are not getting their recommended amount of sleep.
Plurality of public believes in strict creationism for humans: Gallup found in December that 40% of adults, when given a choice, believe that "God created humans pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so". 38% believe that humans developed over millions of years with God guiding the process, while 16% believe in evolution and believe God had no role in it.
·47% of voters with no college education believe that humans were created 10,000 years ago as-is, compared to 43% who think humans evolved over millions of years (with or without God)
·By a 74%-22% margin, voters with a postgraduate education believe in evolution (God-guided or not).
· According to Pew, 97% of scientists believe in evolution in a question with slightly different wording ("Humans and other living things have evolved over time" or "Human beings and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time").
o However, only 60% of the public believe that scientists generally agree that humans have evolved.
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