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OCR for page 537
Sex Counts: A Methodological
Critique of Hite's Women and Love
Tom W. Smith
In the fall of 1987, with a media campaign more sagely planned and
successfully executed than those of most of the 1988 presidential
candidates, Shere Hite (1987) launched the final book of her Hite
Report trilogy, Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress.
The overall conclusion of the book is that women are deeply dissat-
isfied with their relationships with their husbands and male lovers.
Hite reports that 84 percent were not emotionally satisfied with their
relationships, that 84 percent of their husbands/lovers frequently re-
sponded to what they said with ridicule or condescension, and that
95 percent had faced "emotional and psychological harassment." In
contrast Hite found that relations between women and their female
friends were warm and emotionally supportive. Hite reports that
87 percent said these friendships were emotionally closer than those
with husbands/lovers. In addition, in perhaps her most widely cited
statistics, Hite asserts that 70 percent of women married five years or
more "are having sex outside of their marriages" (pp. 395-396, 856~.
To evaluate how much credence to give this finding of infidelity, as
well as her other figures and conclusions, the methodology employed
must be considered and a determination made of whether it was
scientifically sound and likely to yield reliable, valid estimates and
whether appropriate conclusions were drawn from the data.
Tom W. Smith is with the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago.
This is a revised and extended version of a paper initially prepared for the American
Association for Public Opinion Research, annual meeting, Toronto, May 1988.
537
OCR for page 538
538 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
METHODOLOGY: GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
Hite's methodology is describer! and defended in a 18-page appendix,
"Essay on the Methodology of the Hite Report," as well as in an essay
by Gladys Enge] Lang, "Quantifying the Emotions: Methodological
Observations on the Hite Trilogy." Unfortunately Hite's methodolog-
ical essay consists largely of a defense of her general hermeneutical
and feminist approach and a criticism of other approaches. She
presents only the barest glimmer of documentation about how her
study was conducted and analyzecI.
Sampling
Hite asserts that her research could not have been carried out if
she had tried to employ random probability sampling. She charges
that with such a sampling approach it would have been impossi-
ble (1) to guarantee anonymity (pp. 774, 778) and (2) to have an
essay or open-ended questionnaire (p. 777~. She also contends (1)
that true random probability samples do not exist (pp. xxx and
778) and (2) that the social sciences are swinging behind her type
of research methodology (pp. xxx, 769-773~. These criticisms are,
at best, extreme. Ensuring respondents of confidentiality and gain-
ing their cooperation for surveys on sensitive topics are challenging
tasks, but national probability samples have been carried out on such
difficult topics as drug addiction (including urine tests), homosexual
behavior, and alcoholism, to mention only a few. Similarly, although
closed-ended questions are more common than open-ended ones, in
contemporary survey research open-ended questions are used. For
example, over the years about one-sixth of the attitude questions on
American National Election Studies have been open-ended (Converse
and Schuman, 1984:305~.
Instead Hite used a combination of haphazard sampling and vol-
unteer respondents to collect her cases. First, she sent questionnaires
to a variety of organizations and asked them to circulate the question-
naires to their members. She does not list all organizations solicited
but mentions that they included "church groups in thirty-four states,
women's voting and political groups in nine states, women's rights
organizations in thirty-nine states, professional women's groups in
twenty-two states, counseling and walk-in centers for women or fam-
ilies in forty-three states, and a wide range of other organizations,
such as senior citizens' homes and disabled people's organizations, in
various states" (p. 777~. There is no information on the comparative
representation of these groups either among the initial distribution
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SEX COUNTS ~ 539
of questionnaires or among the completed cases (on response rates,
see below), but these groups would not seem to be representative of
women in general, with an overrepresentation of feminist groups and
of women in troubled circumstances. In addition, the use of groups
to distribute the questionnaires apparently meant that gatekeepers
(and perhaps a single person) had the power of assuring a zero re-
sponse rate (by duckling not to distribute the questionnaires) or,
conversely, of perhaps greatly stimulating returns by endorsing the
study in some fashion. However, since no information is presented on
such matters, the actual role of gatekeepers cannot be ascertained.
Second, Hite also relied on volunteer respondents who wrote in
for copies of the questionnaire. These volunteers seem to have been
recruited from readers of her past books and from those who saw
her interviews on television and in the press. This type of volunteer
respondent is the exact opposite of the randomly selected respon-
dent utilized in standard survey research and even more potentially
unrepresentative than the group samples cited above.
Response Rates
Hite reports that she clistributec3 100,000 questionnaires and oh
tained 4,500 responses for a final response rate of 4.5 percent. While
admitting that this response rate is Tower than that obtained on full-
probability surveys (which she states would not have been possible
to use, given her research methodology; see above), she claims that
"this is almost twice as high as the standard rate of return for this
kind of questionnaire distribution, which is estimated at 2.5 to 3 per-
cent" (p. 777~. Given the highly unusual nature of her questionnaire
and the unusual nature of her "sample," it is doubtful that there is
any standard rate of return. While the source of the 2.5-3 percent
return figure is not certain, it probably represents the percentage of
people placing orders or making contributions in response to direct
mail solicitations.
In general a response rate as Tow as 4.5 percent is extremely
unlikely to yield a representative sample since nonresponse bias is a
function of how different the respondents are from nonrespondents
and the size of the nonresponse group. Hite supplies no direct in-
formation about the differences between her respondents and nonre-
spondents and, given her sample design, any such comparison would
be virtually impossible (although one of her statistical information
questions Where did you obtain this questionnaire? might have
shed some light on the comparative response rates from the groups
OCR for page 540
540 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
she selectecI). Standard survey experience suggests, however, that
respondents are typically different from nonrespondents and that the
degree of difference is probably inversely associated with the response
rate (Smith, 1983, 1984~. In particular, responses usually come dis-
proportionately from those who are agitated by, or concerned about,
an issue. It is thus likely that the small minority of women who
responded would be heavily drawn from those who were dissatisfied
with their personal relationships with men.
Representat~veness and Census/Demographic
Comparisons
Hite argues that "sufficient effort was put into the various forms of
distribution that the final statistical breakdown of those participating
according to age, occupation, religion, and other variables known for
the U.S. population at large in most cases quite closely mirrors that
of the U.S. female population" (p. 777, see also p. 801~. She gives
two pages (pp. 802-803) of tabular comparisons of the attributes of
her respondents to the U.S. census and other sources. At first glance,
one is impressed by how well her figures match the census, but closer
inspection raises serious questions about this favorable impression.
The first question that arises is whether Hite's data are weighted
to match those of the census. In her introductory statement, Lang
indicates that the data were weighted (p. xxx: "Most survey research
tociay tries to match its samples demographically to the general pop-
ulation in other ways by, for example, weighting responses to conform
to the population profile, as Hite doesn't. Hite herself comes close
to admitting this directly when she closely echoes Lang's statement:
"Most survey research now tries to match its sample demographically
to the general population in other ways; for example, by weighting
responses to conform to the population profile, somewhat similarly
to the methods used here" (p. 778~. If the demographics were merely
weighted to match the census, then of course nothing is known about
the representativeness of the raw ciata. However, since the evidence
is not conclusive (on this point as elsewhere because of a lack of ~locu-
mentation), one must proceed to examine the statistical comparisons
on pp. 802-803 under the assumption that these comparisons are not
weighted and, therefore, are of some interest.
Once again, the continual problem of inadequate documentation
arises. One is often unsure of how terms are defined or where the
census comparisons come from and what they represent exactly.
Some problems start when the first comparison of age is made. Hite's
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SEX COUNTS ~ 541
respondents are generally adults, but since she includes a few cases
(4 percent) under 18 she apparently compares her respondents to the
age distribution of the entire female population from infants on up.
This naturally indicates that her sample "underrepresents" females
under 18. Of course, she did not really intend to cover this segment
of the population, so the mismatch is not important. In attempting
to see how the age distribution among adults compared, it was found
that the percentages for her study added up to only 97 percent and
those for the census to only 96.5 percent. Since the rest of her
percentages total 100 percent (within what might be attributed to
rounding error), it is not clear why both of these figures are off by so
much.
Her second comparison on education shows the only major devi-
ation from census results reported in her tables. Those with a high
school degree or less are unclerrepresented by 11.7 percent. This re-
sult is to be expected given her sample design and the fact that even
full-probability surveys tend to underrepresent the less educated, al-
though not typically to this degree. It is more surprising, however,
that variables such as income and race, which are highly associated
with education, do not show a similar pattern of underrepresentation.
The third comparison, with income, raises the most serious ques-
tions. Hite shows a virtually perfect match to the census. However,
what the census income figures measure and what Hite's figures cover
are not the same and not comparable. The census figures represent
the total money income (i.e., both earned and unearned) of women
15 years and older in 1985 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1987:105~.
Hite, on the other hand, asked her respondents to report what the
approximate total income of their househoIc3 was, before taxes, in
the previous year. Household income is dramatically higher than
individual income and would not come close to matching the census
figures for women with money income. For example, from the same
Census Bureau publication that Hite used, the percentage of house-
holds with incomes over $25,000 was 47.6 percent in 1985, compared
to the S.5 percent she reported. (Of course, Hite does state that
she used four different versions of the questionnaire, and since she
presents only one version in the book the possibility cannot be ruled
out that respondent income was collected in other versions. This
seems unlikely, however; see p. 775.)
In the next comparison on race, the lack of definitions and of
specification of the Census Bureau publications utilized makes any
evaluation difficult. By many definitions of the Hispanic population,
the 1.5 percent census figure and the 1.8 percent in her study are
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542 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
both Tow. The census typically uses a Spanish-origin question to
determine the Hispanic share of the population, and this measure
shows Hispanic women making up a little over 6 percent of adult
women (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1985~.
With respect to geographic area, it is very unclear how Hite
was able to match the census figures. She did not ask information
on geographical location and apparently co(led both type of area
and region from postmarks on the letters (p. 777~. To have coded
postmarks into categories that matched the census would have been
a major (and needlessly inefficient) task involving the correct geo-
graphic coding of many, if not most, of the ZIP codes in the country
ant! would have producer! much error from questionnaires mailed
from a nonresidential address and from the many letters that do not
have readable or codable postmarks. (On geographic region, see the
comments immediately above.)
With regard to marital status, the most peculiar thing is the
strange note that makes inappropriate references to such things as
"life expectancy tables" anti "projected divorce rate." It appears
that these comments are directed toward the issue of calculating the
proportion of marriages that will end in divorce, or some similar
matter, and have nothing to do with the simple marital distributions
that she is presenting.
The next comparison is the percentage of women in the labor
force under various marital and child-caring circumstances. Although
her vague census references have not been checked, on the face of it
there appear to be no problems with the numbers presented.
Finally, the comparison of party identification is problematic
on two counts. First, it is unclear where in her questionnaire she
collected this information. It is not one of her demographics, and
the only other questions that would yield any political identification
information are the global ones "Who are you? What is your descrip-
tion of yourself?" It seems dubious that these wouIcT have yielded
any extensive ant! readily codable partisan information. Second, it is
hard to figure where she obtained the comparison figures. She cites
"CBS News poll, May, 1987, clistributed by the Eagleton Founda-
tion [sic), New Jersey." This apparently refers to a fact sheet on the
gender gap prepared by the Center for the American Woman and
Politics (1987) of the Eagleton Institute. This document presents
figures from a May 1987 CBS poll that match the percentages for
women who are Republicans and Democrats, which Hite includes in
her table. The fact sheet does not, however, give the percentages for
indepen(lents, conservatives, or ra(licals that she reports; also, CBS
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SEX COUNTS ~ 543
i
does not even code political identifications such as conservative and
radical (Kathleen Ffankovic, personal communication, 1988~.
In brief, the statistical comparisons are riddled with peculiarities:
n a number of cases, Hite does not appear to have collectecl the
information that she matched with the census; in other cases, the
matches, although possible, would have been extremely difficult; and
in still other instances, either numbers fait to add up or definitions
clo not fit the data.
ESSAY QUESTIONNAIRE AND ANALYSIS
Hite's questionnaire consists of 127 open-ended questions, many with
numerous subquestions and follow-ups. (At one point she refers to
180 questions [p. 779i, and her questionnaire has over 400 queries
and follow-ups.) It would have been a gargantuan task for anyone to
complete. By Hite's own estimate her respondents spent over 20,000
hours completing the questionnaire, an average of at least 4.4 hours
per person. Hite instructed respondents that "it is not necessary to
answer every question! There are seven headings; feel free to skip
around and answer only those sections or questions you choose."
Hite provides no information about how frequently the respondents
skipped over questions; thus, we do not know if a particular question
was answerer! by all 4,500 or only a small fraction of the total.
Given the extreme burden of completing the entire questionnaire, it
is probable that many respondents clid skip over questions. This item
nonresponse would probably introduce more bias into the study.
As difficult as the completion of the questionnaire was for re-
sponclents, it was even more challenging to code and analyze. Hite
indicates that 40,000 person-hours were spent analyzing the answers.
Much of this would have been needed just to code the open-ended
answers. Hite indicates that indiviclual answers were copied onto a
"large chart" for each question. Once so compiled the responses were
examined for "patterns and 'categories'." She indicates that usually
the "categories more or less formed themselves" (p. 779~. This coding
of the complex, open-ended material might be the most problematic
part of the entire study. Taking the voluminous and variegated es-
say material, it is not only possible but likely that one could find
whatever results one wanted within the responses. Given the strong
ideological positions of the author, it would have taken the greatest
care and the most exacting cocling criteria to have avoided subjec-
tive and biases! coding of the data. (On the clifficulties of handling
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544 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
open-endecl questions and coding, see Duncan et al., 1973; Schuman
and Presser, 1981.)
Worcling of Essay Questions
Hite's questions have a distinctive style, a kind of brisk, rapid-fire
type of probing and following-up that throws out queries, follow-ups
with possible answers, and digs for more details. This style is much
more leading and less studiously neutral than open-ended questions
usually are, but although atypical, this general style probably does
not in itself seriously mold and shape responses. Individual questions
pose more serious problems, however. Often there is a lack of balance
in questions. For example, consider the following two questions about
mothers and fathers:
9. Was your mother affectionate with you? Did she speak
sweetly to you? Sing to you? Bathe you ant! do your
hair? Were there any clashes between you? When was
she angriest? What do you think of her today? Do you
like to spencl time with her?
10. Was your father affectionate? Did you talk? Go places
together? DicT you like him? Fear him? Respect him?
What did you argue about? What do you think of him
today?
The questions cover substantially different ground and have a
very traditionalist perspective. Mothers talk sweetly and groom
you. Fathers are to be feared and/or respected. What can be learned
about mothers and fathers is not equivalent and is severely limited by
the traditionalist cast of the questions. In another example (question
40), Hite asks who performs several traditional female household
tasks (doing dishes, beds, cooking, etc.) but fails to inquire about
any traditional mate tasks (yard work, repairs, automobile upkeep,
etc.~. Again, only one-sided analysis is possible from these questions.
Many other questions suffer from a host of nagging technical problems
such as unclear referents, being clouble-barreled, and vagueness.
Analysis of Essay Questions
Many of the statistical tables describe topics and categories that are
vague and confusing. For example, at one point we learn that "87
percent of women say they feel they are not really 'seen' by the men
they are with" (p. 812~. What does that mean and how was it coiled
from which questions? We also learn that 95 percent have faced
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SEX COUNTS | 545
"emotional and psychological harassment" but that only 56 percent
are being "undermined or sabotaged psychologically" (pp. 810, 811~.
What do these terms mean and what is the difference between the
two that leads to quite different percentages? Also, on the basis
(apparently) of question 50 ("Do you believe in monogamy? Have
you/are you having sex-outside the relationship? Known to your
partner? How do you feel about it? What is it/was it giving you?"),
how clid Hite decide that for 60 percent of men their reaction to
finding out about their wife's infidelity was "Iow-keyed" or "very Tow-
keyed" (pp. 417-418), while 40 percent reacted "stormily" (p. 865~.
Then too, what is the difference between the statements "only about
one-fourth of women having affairs had ever had their husbands
find out about them. In fact, most affairs (74 percent) are never
discovered or openly recognized . . ." (p. 417, note) and "89 percent
of marries! women keep their affairs secret and/or are never 'found
out' (or at least never confronted) by their husbands" (p. 861~?
Other than the statements that 4,500 women answered the ques-
tionnaire, that respondents were told they did not have to answer
all questions, and that some questions were adcled only after much
data tract been collected, nothing is known about how many people
answered particular questions. Often the number left in a particular
table hacT to be but a small percentage of the entire 4,500. For ex-
ample, all questions about married women were asked of a maximum
of about 2,200 (if no item nonresponse is assumed. If 70 percent
of all married women cheat and if only 11 percent of husbands find
out, the "how-did-he-react" table cited above covered a maximum of
about 170 husbands (2,200 x .7 x .11 = 169~. This again, of course, is
only approximate since it assumes no item nonresponse and strings
together statistics from several of Hite's tables. Similarly, the table
on p. 892 was probably based on a few hundred cases, (lepencling on
the definition of "gay women" and other undocumented issues. The
problem is not that some questions refer only to small subsets, but
that Hite's report does not mention the large shifts in case bases and
makes it difficult to determine even the approximate number of cases
involved in virtually any of the tables.
Cross Tabulations of Essay Questions
Hite presents nearly 100 pages of cross tabulations of her essay
questions, typically showing how responses varied by age, income,
race/ethnicity, education, occupation/employment, ant! marital sta-
tus/cluration of marriage. Responses to the essay questions show
OCR for page 546
546 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS
remarkably little variation by these demographics. A random sample
of 93 cross tabulations showed that the average percentage difference
between the extreme response categories was only 3.25. One might
well expect to find greater variation than that by chance alone.
In addition, differences repeatecITy fait to appear when well-
established theories and previous empirical research have demon-
strated subgroup differences. For example, whites report greater
happiness than blacks (Davis, 1984; Freudiger, 1979; Singh et al.,
1981), but this pattern fails to emerge in Hite's tabulations. Sim-
ilarly, Hite finds no racial or class variations in spousal violence
(p. 821), again contrary to well-established patterns (Gelles and Cor-
nell, 1985:73,109; Strauss, 1980~.
CONCLUSION
Hite's substantive findings about the current state of "women and
love" and about such specific matters as the infidelity rate and level
of female homosexuality or bisexuality must be considered problem-
atic and questionable because of the methoclology employed. The
extreme lack of documentation, the use of nonrandom or volunteer
respondents and other suspect methodologies, the vague and contra-
dictory reporting of findings, and the inconsistencies in the statistical
comparisons to the U.S. census and other sources, all seriously un-
dermine her figures and conclusions. In the marketplace of scientific
ideas, Hite's work would be found in the curio shop of the bazaar of
pop and pseudoscience.
REFERENCES
Center for the American Woman and Politics, Eagleton Institute (1987) The Gender
Gap, Fact Sheet. New Brunswick, N.J.: Eagleton Institute.
Converse, J. M., and Schuman, H. (1984) The manner of inquiry: An analysis of
survey question form across organizations and over time. In C. F. Turner and E.
Martin (eds.), Surveying Subjective Phenomena, Vol. 2. New York: Russell Sage
and Basic Books.
Davis, J. A. (1984) New money, an old man/lady, and "Two's Company": Subjective
welfare in the NORC general social surveys, 1972-1982. Social Indicators Research
15:319-350.
Duncan, O. D., Schuman, H., and Duncan, B. (1973) Social Change in a Metropolitan
Community. New York: Russell Sage and Basic Books.
Freudiger, P. T. (1979) Life Satisfaction Among American Women. Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, North Texas State University.
Gelles, R. J., and Cornell, C. P. (1985) Intimate Violence in Families. Beverly Hills,
Calif.: Sage Publications.
Hite, S. ( 1987) Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress. New York:
Knopf.
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SEX COUNTS ~ 547
Schuman, H., and Presser, S. (1981) Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys:
Experiments on Question Form, Wording, and Context. New York: Academic
Press.
Singh, B. K., Adams, L. D., and Jorgenson, D. E. (1981) Epidemiology of marital
unhappiness. International Journal of Sociology of the Family 8:207-218.
Smith, T. W. (1983) The hidden 25%: An analysis of nonresponse on the 1980 general
social survey. Public Opinion Quarterly 47:386-404.
Smith, T. W. (1984) Estimating nonresponse bias with temporary refusals. Sociological
Perspectives 27:473-489.
Smith, T. W. (1988) Speaking out: -Hite vs. Abby in methodological messes. AAPOR
News 15:3-4.
Strauss, M. (1980) Behind Closed Doors: -Violence in the American Family. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Press.
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1985) Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1986.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1987) Money income of households, families, and persons
in the United States: 1985. Current Population Reports, Series P-60, No. 156.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
sex counts