|
|
|
|
Say, has anybody else wondered what questions these pollsters ask in order to determine how happy someone is during a telephone interview? Interesting findings, tho...
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Between 1991 and 1993, a US survey measuring levels of happiness revealed that, on average, homosexuals were less likely to report feeling satisfied in life than heterosexuals.
However, more recent survey results from the year 2000, reported by Christina E. Nellos and her colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, reveal that gay men and women now appear to be just as likely as heterosexuals to say they are happy in life.
"Obviously, there has been an increase in levels of happiness" among homosexuals, study author Dr. Susan D. Cochran told Reuters Health. "But why, we don't know."
She added that these findings do not mean that life is invariably rosy for gays and lesbians. Rather, they suggest that living as a homosexual in a predominantly heterosexual world may not be as bleak as previous researchers have proposed. "Anti-gay stigma and discrimination is a fact of life, but somehow these folks manage to achieve equivalent levels of happiness as other people," Cochran noted.
Nellos and her colleagues based their findings on responses to the question: "Taken all together, how would you say things are these days?" People classified as "happy" were those who said they were very happy or pretty happy, while "unhappy" people were those who said they were not happy at all.
Each participant was classified as either gay or straight based on whether they reported having intercourse with someone of the same gender during the past 5 years. Around 2,000 participants were involved during each survey, a small percentage of whom were gay.
Nellos and her team presented their findings during the recent 130th Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association (news - web sites) in Philadelphia.
During the early 1990s, the authors discovered that only 79% of men who reported homosexual experiences said they were happy in life, compared with 92% of men who said they only had sex with women. Similarly, only 79% of women who reported lesbian experiences answered they were either very happy or pretty happy, a response reported by 91% of women who had only had sex with men.
However, when the investigators re-examined more current responses from the year 2000, they found that both heterosexual and homosexual men and women were equally likely to report feeling satisfied in life, with around 90% of each group saying they were happy.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Cochran noted that it is also encouraging to see that the overwhelming majority of people report feeling happy, whatever their sexual orientation.
In terms of why the reports of happiness among gays have increased, she noted that in the early 1990s, the gay community was hit particularly hard by the AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic. During that time, Cochran said, treatments were less effective than they are now, and many people were either watching close friends die or were infected themselves, with little hope of recovery.
She noted that improvements in how heterosexuals view gays and lesbians may also play a role in why, overall, homosexuals now appear just as happy as heterosexuals. "Perhaps it's a better environment in which to be gay than it used to be," Cochran noted.
Nellos added in an interview that while the question used to measure happiness does get at overall life satisfaction, it is difficult to say whether it truly represents how happy a person is.
"Always forgive your enemies...nothing annoys them quite so much." Oscar Wilde
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
trevor
|
 |
Really getting into it |
Registered: November 2002
Messages: 732
|
|
|
but I "believe" in polls less and less as time goes on. I stopped participating in them professionally because far too often the "most correct" answer was not listed, nor was "none of the above" or "other", so I was too often compelled to compromise in my answers.
If they excluded people who hadn't gotten any for the last 5 years, they probably excluded a lot of unhappy people and a lot of younger and older people, I'd guess. They also would've miscatagorized us "intergender married" gay anomalies based on who we've been sleeping with.
I do still think it's a little ray of sunshine, though.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
e
|
 |
On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
|
|
|
This really does not have the appearance of a valid research study, though it could be. First there is no indication that the sample was random. If they just went down to the local shopping mall and questioned people the sample would definitely be skewed. Also the sample size is quite small and they admit that only a small percentage were classified as gay. One or two answers could possibly change the result by sevearl percent. Second, they don't present any evidence that the questions actually measure what they purport to measure. Classifying a person's sexuality according to who they have had sex with is probably not a valid and/or reliable measure. There may be other problems as well, but these to issues are more than enough to call the whole thing into question.
Think good thoughts,
e
|
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
|
] 
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
Something new for a Friday 
