As America considers further intrusions into citizens' private lives under the Obama administration, past privacy invasions are routinely exposed.
-- From "U.S. Government Paid 15-Year-Olds $40 to Answer Graphic Questions About Sexual Behavior" by Fadia Galindo, CNSNews.com 9/9/09
From March 2002 to March 2003, the federal government paid more than a thousand 15- to 17-year-olds $40 each to answer questions about their sex lives, including intimate questions about specific sexual acts, whether they had ever engaged in homosexual acts, whether they had used contraception, and what sorts of discussions they had had with their parents about sex.
Armed with laptops loaded with two questionnaires, one for females and one for males, more than 200 federally funded female questioners from the University of Michigan went into homes throughout the country to administer the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) on the behalf of the National Center for Health Statistics.
The NCHS is part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
“Out of the 12,571 males and females we interviewed in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, 1,307 were 15-17 years of age,” Dr. William D. Mosher, statistician and NSFG team leader at the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., told CNSNews.com.
According to questionnaires published by the CDC in a public document available on the government agency’s Web site (“Plan of Operation of Cycle 6 of the National Survey of Family Growth” - PDF), young teens were systematically asked graphic and personal questions about their sexual behavior out of earshot or the presence of their parents.
To read excerpts from the questionnaire and the responses from teens, CLICK HERE.
