Sorry, didn't mean to light the fuse and walk away on that one.Originally Posted by ReineD
As I said it was a summary of the results of a newspaper poll. So, yes, the respondents were self-selecting and limited to those who cared enough to pick up a pen, fill in the form, address it, stamp it and walk it to a mailbox. All of these things would invalidate it as a study, but that's not what it was. To underscore it was a popular quiz and not a scientific survey, there were exactly 20 questions.
In his paper he publishes the questionnaire and question by question reports the results. He did not try to estimate the number of crossdressers in the general population or anything. What he did was give results that would be interesting, I think, to someone trying to understand something about crossdressers -- would they have a sex change if they could? 77% said no. Do they go out of the house dressed? 47% said yes. (Seems high to me, but as you pointed out the sample was self-selected.) He fills in with his personal commentary and with quotes from the respondents.
The value of the paper, to me, is not its scientific rigor but the information it gives to people who are just being confronted by a partner's crossdressing or a crossdresser just coming to terms with his own. Yes, you can be a crossdresser and still be straight. No, being a crossdresser is not a greased slide to a full-on transition. You don't have to like Coleman's credentials to get the benefit from this -- the fact that he's a prima face quack doesn't change his numbers.But it's accessible information and the results seem in line with more scholarly papers.
