saturn comments on Sociosexual Orientation Inventory, or failing to perform basic sanity checks - Less Wrong
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But don't surveys generally throw out outlier responses?
Define outlier. I have thrown out, or capped, data that is logically impossible, but I've also knowingly, and unknowingly included outliers I was skeptical of because there is no widely agreed upon standard for treating them. I could try many different standards/assumptions, and see if they affect my analysis but this type of work is time consuming and would not be of less interest to my colleagues than the work I would have to sacrifice. I realize this is sometimes problematic and I will make some effort to shift the standards in my discipline, sociology.
It would be a stupid thing to do. In any case that 48-nation survey mentioned throwing away highest 1% of male responses, as supposed outliers, and nothing about throwing away any female responses, which is extremely incompatible with "female outliers" theory.