Dear Fiona and other responders discussing “My Daddy’s Name is Donor” at the Donor Sibling Registry message board:
I’m gratified you’re reading the report. The report speaks for itself. As we make clear in the report:
- The study is based on a quantitative survey drawn from a web-based panel of one million-plus households, fielded by Abt SRBI of New York City through Survey Sampling International. See the full discussion of methodology and limitations in the report.
- As noted in an endnote, additional journalistic interviews were conducted by Elizabeth Marquardt to flesh out the narrative. Writers among you will recognize the value of telling a story vs. doing a data dump.
- The authors of this report include Prof Norval Glenn of the University of Texas at Austin, one of our nation’s leading family scholars. His CV is available at the UT-Austin website.
- The report is released by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future, made up of leaders including scholars at some of our nation’s leading universities. The list is available in the report.
- The Institute for American Values is a 501c3 non-profit. Our finances are a matter of public record.
- Regarding objectivity, there is a longstanding debate on objectivity and the sciences. I don’t think we’re going to settle here whether *anyone* approaches scientific inquiry completely devoid of any cares or concerns about the real-world connections.
- Our study is not yet published in peer reviewed journals. Several of us are working on that project (and have demonstrated track records in that regard). If you are a scholar interested in accessing our study data to write for peer reviewed journals, let me know of your interest. In the meantime, in part because we are offering this study data for the first time in this report, we put all the data *in this report.* Table 1 is a full summary of the data. Ample Tables and Figures follow and are all referenced in the text.
I’m grateful you’re all reading the report.
My best,
Elizabeth Marquardt
Categories: My Daddy's Name is Donor
Thank you for your response, Elizabeth. As I have said in a number of my emails, your data alone is revealing and worthy of attention. It was the material that surrounded it that I took issue with. Yes, “WRITERS will recognize the value of telling a story vs. doing a data dump”. However, RESEARCHERS AND SCHOLARS will recognize that any story you tell must derive from your data, NOT randomly chosen sources that support your position. Academic practices cannot eliminate all bias, but they can
greatly improve the objectivity of your work. While I don’t believe there is
such a thing as “objective research”, there are a number of practices that
academia adopts and that are enforced through peer review that help us to present our findings with honesty and integrity. I guess I was just a bit surprised that the report accentuated the randomness of the survey and essentially stated that this makes it more legitimate, but then destroys that legitimacy by engaging in less honest and academically sound practices. However, I am glad that you do report the unmediated data in one of your later chapters.
I do hope to see your data in peer reviewed journals some time soon as I believe it has something important to contribute to the debate. What you unearthed makes me very glad that I chose to conceive with a known donor who is involved in my daughter’s life.
Kind regards,
Fiona