I know nothing of stats I do have a question if you or anyone else might know. When determining a sample size is there a min % of people you need to ask to make the results accurate? For instance in tez post how many females must be asked to make the results correct. And how do you count the people that don't respond. For someone to take the time to respond they would have a vested interest in the topic so that would change the results. You would need to count the nonresponce as what? For example if they did a survey on coffee drinkers I wouldn't answer because I don't drink coffee. So if I didn't answer would that count on the don't drink coffee side? You would prob get a better responce from the pro coffee crowd which would make your stats wrong. Or maybe im thinking to much into this and. Should get back to work. Stats are always kind of interesting to me. Especially around election time.
I think this is a very important question especially when it concerns things like sexual harassment, racial harassment etc. Based on these statistics companies make policies about how these things are perceived and treated, laws are made, If the information is weighted in favour of one side of the argument you will end up with unfair policies and more than likely unfair dismissals affecting peoples lives.
These particular surveys, the last being in 2009, point to there being a 'huge' problem in sexual harassment among the forces, so the powers that be demand 'action', that action is an absolute zero tolerance of anything that might even conceivably regarded as sexual harassment such as calling some one 'dear', people are disciplined, fined, given custodial sentences ( yes in the forces you can 14 days in the cells for such things), you create an atmosphere of terror basically, where everyone is scared to say anything, there's suspicion of women, suspicion of each other, lack of morale and people basically wanting to leave because these draconian measures. It's a situation that does no one any good.
There's a school of thought, popular here during the Labour parties stint in power that we have to understand that all men are potential rapists and all women are victims, I believe there was a period where the saying was that every woman had been raped at some point in her life. They said that every time a woman had sex with her partner and didn't really want to but said yes anyway that was rape. It became quite strident and many men felt under attack. Things have quietened down a little from that thank goodness but there still is that reaction now which has boomeranged from people not believing women to believing women are victims.
Something we are struggling with is the current problem of binge drinking, women who drink so much they can't stand, who pass out and find they have had sex with a man they don't know. This is causing a lot of debate, did she consent and doesn't remember, or was she taken advantage of while passed out cold? Is she responsible for whatever happened because she drank herself senseless? It is against the law to have sex with someone who is incapacitated by drink, however it's hard to prove unless the accused is sober and there was a witness or solid proof. It's one of the problems we have to solve, it can be that drunken female who will allege rape by a soldier. She's got paralytic, agreed to come back to his block, passed out on his bed and woke up to find she'd had sex. Sometime later she's told her friend or even read it somewhere, could be days later, weeks even and has been told that she was raped so it gets reported to the police. Now what to do? Military camps are in the middle of nowhere, there's very little on them to amuse civvies in an evening, there used to be NAAFIs but no more, they closed them as the squaddies go out now they have money. There's no reason for girls to be there unless they want to be, you can't drag a female in pass the security on the gate, it's rare these days for soldiers to guard their own camps so mates won't be there. Taxi's aren't allowed on camp, the guards can see who's in cars, soldiers often have to sign on at gate. Mostly they get dropped off by taxi at camp gates and walk in because they are as drunk as skunks, members of the opposite sex can be allowed in the UK accomodation, the army provide double beds in the new single man accomodation. So has that girl been raped? How do the police investigate when both parties were drunk and can't remember in the morning never mind weeks later. What ever though this rape allegation is logged and goes onto the statistics, what does that say? That we have a problem with rape or a problem with people drinking or both?
All allegations of sexual harassment are logged and they too become statistics, does that mean there's a problem of harassment in that organisation if it's then found there's no case to answer?
Many police forces have a similiar problem when allegations are made against them people look at that not how many times the allegations have been unfounded.
