This story (full study here) unintentionally shows one of the biggest problems in polling: What you don’t mention can influence the results. A study shows public opinion is supportive of comprehensive sex ed and hostile toward abstinence-only education — even across political ideologies. But it doesn’t bother to offer “no sex education in schools” as an option: “The measures each represented a different type of sex education…”
The omission particularly glaring to me because it’s my opinion. Schools are doing a bad enough job teaching kids history and math. (A) There’s no reason to burden them with awkward and morality-infused parenting tasks like this and (B) there’s no reason to believe they can even approach the level of competence necessary to teach the subject fairly and accurately.
Of course, this isn’t the first poll to rest on weak assumptions. Gun scholar John Lott once pointed out how polls often ask, in effect, “So, will stealing people’s guns lower crime a little, a lot or not at all?” without even acknowledging the possibility — fact, Lott’s research would indicate — that stealing people’s guns actually increases crime.
Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.
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