Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

THE WELLESLEY REPORT 183is known as a self-selecting poll. Responsible pollsters call them SLOPs—self-selected listener opinion polls—and they avoid doing them, orcrediting them when other pollsters do them. 80A famous example usedin introductory statistics classes shows their failings—the 1936 SLOPpublished by the Literary Digest that showed Alf Landon beating FDR bya landslide. SLOPs continue to be popular with some mass-market publicationsas a form of entertainment, but no serious researcher relies onthem.I asked Tom W. Smith, a director at the National Opinion ResearchCeiiter at the University of Chicago, whether we learn anything from apoll of this kind: "No, because there is a crucial fallacy in self-selectedresearch: you get a biased response." He pointed out that the Wellesleyharassment survey was in fact the result of not one but two stages of selfselection.The study was confined to readers of Seventeen, whose readersare not necessarily representative of the population of adolescent girls;and readers who respond to such a survey tend to be those who feel moststrongly about the problem. "Even if they had forty thousand responsesit would still prove very little," said Smith. "You still have to wonderabout the other million and a half-plus who did not respond."It is not hard to see how SLOPs could be used to generate alarm inalmost any area of social interaction. Using Nan Stein's methodology, wecould easily get people worked up about the problem of neighborlyharassment. We begin by writing a story describing a case of horrifyingneighbor behavior. Assume that we print this in a publication like theReader's Digest. Certain passages would be highlighted—"It's probablyhappened to you" and "You don't have to put up with it—in fact it'sillegal. And your city government is responsible for stopping it." Wewould then enclose a convenient one-page survey called "What's Happeningto You?" asking whether your neighbor did any of a list of things toyou in the past year—"generally annoy you by asking for burdensomefavors," "scream at your children," "play loud music or have loud parties,""damage your lawn, your car, your garden, your pet, or any other property,""frighten you by reckless, threatening behavior—involving alcohol,drugs, or guns," "steal from you or physically attack you or any memberof your family." And we would end by asking, "If you have been tormentedby your neighbor, how did it make you feel?"It would be expected that the Digest would receive responses fromsome small percentage of its readers and that the vast majority of this smallpercentage would give details of being victimized by a neighbor. The"researcher" could then tally up the results in a scientific-looking brochurefull of tables, charts, and percentages (86 percent were accosted by