The Lab Manual for students has no entry for this lab.   Naive subjects are essential!

The exercise involves distributing a questionnaire in BIOL 73 lectures and then having your labs analyze and discuss the results.

Consult the lecturer for BIOL 73.   It is best to schedule this lab to precede (but ideally not by much) any coverage of sexual selection and mate choice in the lectures.   The results of the survey can then, if the lecturer wishes, serve as an example of mate choice.   Allow time to complete the analyses of the data in lab.

Distributing the questionnaire to the class must be done carefully, both to obtain useful data and to avoid offending people.   The beginning of lecture might prove to be the best time, although the end might also work well.   Have a couple of large cardboard boxes to collect questionnaires.   Emphasize anonymity of the questionnaires.

Here is a suggestion for how to present the questionnaire.

One TA announces to the class (loud voice needed):  

The laboratories in this class are going to study some attitudes toward sexual behavior in Carolina students.   We would like your help by filling out this questionnaire.  

We will give everybody the results once they are analyzed.

These questionnaires are completely anonymous -- do not put your name on them.   We have boxes for your answer sheets so no one will know which is yours.

Don't think about your answers.   Just mark down the first thing that comes to mind.   We will only take a couple of minutes before we collect them.

If you do not want to answer any question, just leave it blank.   And if you don't want to participate at all, just skip the whole thing.

Just mark down the first thing that comes to mind.   Let's have those questionnaires back!

When your labs meet, use the article by Buss in American Scientist to explain the predictions for mate choice in males and females.   In short, we expect differences in the limiting resources for reproduction by males and females.   Female reproduction is limited more by resources for her offspring, while male reproduction is limited more by access to fertile mates.

This difference in humans is, of course, not absolute.   Nevertheless, as a consequence of the different limitations on reproduction, we expect females to exercise greater choice and to focus on resources available from potential mates.   We expect males to be less choosy about mates and to focus on the reproductive potential of mates.

Have students analyze the questionnaire in small groups.   Mixed sex groups are best.   After collating the results, everyone can join in the comparison of the results with the expectations.

To have all results available for each section, you can have each section analyze the entire set of questionnaires.   You should emphasize that they should make no marks on the questionnaires.

Please make sure that Wiley gets copies of the collated results and also stores the original questionnaires for future reference.