Um, pretty good, considering 98% of Catholics take birth control, wear rubbers and eat meat on Fridays.
Oh come on. This is how polls work. You don't poll segments that are not relevant to the measurement; the women omitted either are too young or too old (and would most likely follow similar levels of usage when looking back at their earlier days) at the time it was taken. Are you going to make the argument that since only a few thousand women were actually polled, that only 0.000001% of Catholic women use it? Or maybe we should add Catholic men to the disenfranchised since you can't spell 'Catholic Women' without 'Catholic Men'?
I'm not sure that 60 year-old women have to worry about using contraception. 15-44 is the vast, vast majority of fertile women, therefore there is no statistical reason to poll pre-pubescent and post-menopausal women.
I'm also not sure that women who are not currently engaging in sexual intercourse would use birth control as a means of contraception (perhaps they may use it for hormonal balances or another reason), but again, not a relevant demographic for the question.
Also, the same study found that only 2% of all Catholic women (faithful adherents and looseys alike) use "natural family planning".
*facepalm*
It's not saying that because they used sampling the statistic is invalid. It's saying that the number that people have been flinging around is based upon an
unrepresentative sample, and therefore is only valid for the subsample of Catholic women that they were studying and can't be extended to the distinct populations they didn't measure.
Realistic Idealist - you're a Catholic right?
Yes.
