PLEASE HELP :D

[nny]

I would appreciate your filling in this poll if you have time; I'd also appreciate you pimping it, especially if you have UK folk on your f-list.

Basically I'm carrying out this poll as preliminary information for my Educational Study - I also intend on printing out what results I have tomorrow morning so I can show it to my Professional Tutor in order to justify my desire to study this topic, so the sooner you can respond the better.

The age categories are divided according to educational key stage in order to make the information more applicable to my study.

If you've got any suggestions how the poll could be improved, let me know.

NOTE: please ignore the whole 'go to question 3' style directions. It just confuses the issue needlessly and I confused the wording. Answer all questions, please.

Cheers, darlins. :D


[Poll #1060837]

Comments

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Number the questions?

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

I couldn't take the poll because of the "needed to know" wording. In my case, what I needed to know came in the form of discussions with my parents, long before any formal sex education began in school.

Oh, and I know this poll is primarily focused on the UK, but basic school sex ed is given in the U.S. when we're 9/10 (or at least it was when I was in school)

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I'll keep that in mind for when I do a more official version of this. Cheers. :D

[villainny.livejournal.com]

We also get sex ed at that age, but it's built on and consolidated throughout secondary school. The age group I'll be teaching is the 11-18 age group so that's where my focus is.

Thanks for the heads up on the wording, I'll keep that in mind when I carry out more official polls later on.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

The sexually aware question is difficult, because we may have different definitions of sexually aware. I mean, are we talking crushes or masturbation here, you know? Or just awareness of the existence of sex? Does walking in on your parents count? (these are all hypotheticals :P not indicative of my answer)

[silveraspen]

Suggestions for improvement in a more official version:

1) Numbering the quesstions/being careful with the "go to" wording, so that you don't inadvertently encourage people to skip some of the baseline data points by trying to help them to fill in country or orientation-specific questions only. (This could be because I am sleepy, but. *wry* It took me a few looks to realize.)

2) Seconding what bethbethbeth said w/r/t age at which sex ed was offered in school. Maybe also include something about mandatory v. voluntary sex ed classes, if there's a difference in the system you're examining? And/or specify educational source in your questioning. E.g. someone might have received sex education but outside the school system, you know?

3) Also seconding maggiebloome; sexually "aware" is difficult wording due to reasons of definition.

4) You may end up tripping over issues of child sexual abuse somewhere in all this.

5) Writing questionnaires is HARD. You have my complete sympathy. *passes tea*

[silveraspen]

Oh hey one last thing. *wry* Allow me to showcase my ignorance! I am presuming based on context that your numeric categories are "your age at this point in school/education" and not "years of school completed." Still, it might be something to clarify on a more official version.

[silveraspen]

A second "one last thing." (You get stream-of-consciousness based on my uncaffeinated state.) You'll want to keep your age categories constant between questions for greater generalizability and ease of analysis. :)

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I'm probably going to format this with much greater detail when I'm carrying out my study; both w/r/t the meanings of 'sexually aware' and 'sexually active' and the levels of helpfulness/applicableness as regards sex education. This is pretty much just an initial survey so I can convince my professional tutor that this is a relevant study to undertake about his school.

Thanks very much for the input, though, and I'll expect you to pull me up on it if I get it wrong next time. ;)

[villainny.livejournal.com]

re 2: We receive sex education before secondary school but 11-18 has to be my focus. I'll definitely include a question about outside knowledge etc. when I carry out the study, though. It could be interesting in terms of a kind of wake-up call to parents/teachers, in a way; it's better to educate children than have them find potentially inaccurate information elsewhere.

re 3: Noted. I'll definitely think about how I word that when I'm collecting data.

re 4: I do realise that that's true. It's something I'm going to talk over carefully with my Professional Tutor before I carry out any questioning, and I'll probably petition for advice on how to word it and such.

re 5: *slurps tea gratefully* That's a point, actually, I've not had a cuppa yet today. I'm gonna go home soon. :D

[villainny.livejournal.com]

*salutes* will do, definitely. I didn't want to refer to school years because of different education systems, I didn't think about that though.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Also true and I'll think carefully about how to categorise. Cheers for all the advice, sugar. *squishes*

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

I was confused by the sexually aware question too - my instinct was to say about age 10/11, but I wasn't sure what category to pick for that so I went with the older one.

Also I'd say there can be arguments about what counts as sexually active, especially for situations where the handy 'did a penis go into a vagina?' isn't applicable. So I erred on the side of caution there, too, but once you have a definition it should be easier to say for sure what I'd click. :)

Looking back, I am still entirely boggled that I managed several years of sex ed with NO mention of gayness at all. For fuck's sake, school!

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

Oh and I would also say that while highschool sex ed was good at clearing up some of the stupider misconceptions that students had, I at least found it really boring because by the time I got to the class I'd already read about all the stuff it mentioned. This wasn't true for everybody, but I'd definitely say most of the information came too late - by the time we were talking about abortion, several girls in my year had already had one, and some had left school to have the baby. If most of the info they'd spread out over the five years had been crammed into the first two years (easily done, nobody did any work in those lessons and some of the stuff from the first two years could have been done later) then I think it would have been a lot more useful.

Also, more info in primary school sex ed would have been good - maybe some kind of 'if you want to know, here's where to go to for info' type thing - but I gather this is outside the scope of your study here so I shall just say YES GOOD IDEA FOR RESEARCH LET NNY DO THIS PLS SCHOOL PEOPLE. *waves flag*

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

It was a fucking good thing I got all my knowledge out of some books my mother bought me because we had virtually NO sex education at my school - it was just assumed we knew everything already and oh god there were some misconceptions flying around.

[renshai.livejournal.com]

I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in Canada, at least, the caliber of sexual education you receive varies greatly depending on the area of the country you live in, and, especially, whether you're attending a Catholic school or a public school.

I was in the public system until I was 13, and then Catholic afterwards, and whereas the public school teaching was relatively (for the time period) inclusive, and seriously thorough, the Catholic basically consisted of "don't ever do anything, ever, unless you're married" and there was next to no mention of non-hetero sexuality at all (while the religion class next period was all "blah blah sinning man and man shall not lie together etc fire and brimstone", which was just so much fun).

I think they're mandated by law to tell you about condoms, etc, but all I remember was being made to memorize the failure rates of all forms of birth control.

Of course, the public school was in Saskatchewan, and the Catholic one in Alberta, which may also have had something to do with it, since Saskatchewan is more liberal than Alberta by a not-inconsiderable margin.

[midnight-violet.livejournal.com]

Ta for the "I don't" ticky box! I know i'm seconding people here, but "aware" and "active" are going to mean very different things to different people. You've got me to thinking though, about P.S.E and biology, the repetition in a different tone. I remember much information on not getting pregnant, and odd sheets about stuff to do with attraction. Oh, and getting taken off to the gym for a periods talk.
Hope thats constructive- i went somewhere good but average- not religious or anything- if you want to talk to UK bods about this anymore at some point.

On being asked once,(mockingly) why i didnt have a boyfriend i announced, somewhat precociously,i guess that i was a feminist... "DUDEK'S A LESBIAN"... :D

[merrymoll.livejournal.com]

Er, I'm an old fart, I started high school 18 years ago, and attended a Catholic school, so naturally the sex ed was affected by the Churches attitude to sex. Plus the Scottish education system is different to the rest of the UK. Most of the really useful info was from my Mum, friends and later, the internet.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

[adaveen.livejournal.com]

I'm ancient. I had sex-ed in fifth grade, but it was all about pigeons.

[ilex-decidua.livejournal.com]

I hit submit before thinking of more pertinent info... Most of the basis for my decisions regarding sex have come from watching my sister have a kid at 17. And subsequently having to give up part of my life to take care of that child. Which I wouldn't take back for anything, but still. You learn.

[neatokates.livejournal.com]

If you can, check out a Canadian teen soap called Degrassi Junior High. It's very frank and open with teens about sex ed type subjects - I wrote a thesis about it that focused on teen pregnancy and AIDS story lines. Just to warn you - it's very 80s. There's a newer version on TV now (Degrassi: The Next Generation), but it's a little more Hollywood. I know they're both out on DVD in the US and Canada.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

You need to ask people's age -- I was 11-18 in the late 60s and early 70s, when sex ed generally ranged from "primitive" to "non-existent".

[cirakaite.livejournal.com]

You might want to include a question re: respondent's age and male/female along with the sexuality question.

To explain my origins, though, I went to a mostly UK based system of international schools, but the locations were Canada, the US, and Thailand from 11-18. Prior to that, it was mainly the UK and Belgium, and no sex-ed at the UK school.

[riva-today.livejournal.com]

Handy vocab, although not everyone will be familiar with it: "sexual debut". Catch-all academic term for all first-instance kinds of sexual activity, with emphasis on partnered sexual behaviour (i.e. not wanking :) ). With "sexually active", there is a much blurrier line (as shown by comments here).

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

Seriously, it's difficult to read the questionnaire, as there are question marks after 'other' also.