The controversial UKM study by its psychology specialist, Dr Khaidzir Ismail, was on the behaviour of delinquent secondary schoolgirls. It was supposed to address the problem of moral decadence to help formulate a special training module to promote high moral values among youngsters/school girls.

Judging by what happened after the revelations of the study findings, it looks like moral decadence of a different kind afflicts their elders who should know better.

If one lesson may be drawn, it is that it is no point doing studies for the government whether Federal or State because the politicians are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in how the findings may further their political agenda or bolster their political and image. If the findings are not consistent with their political agenda or are not helpful to their political agenda, the findings are ‘rubbished’ no matter that they may be true.

The case in point is the findings of Dr Lim Teck Ghee of ASLI’s Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS). When Dr Lim released his findings that bumiputera corporate share was estimated as high as 45% (which was higher than the official figure of 18.9 percent in 2004 underpinning the continuance of the NEP), his findings were repudiated by ASLI president, Mirzan Mahathir who relented to political pressure.

The difference between Dr Lim and Dr Khaidzir is that Dr Lim stood by his findings and resigned.

In the case of the latter, Dr Mohd Khir said, “Khaidzir has admitted that the findings were inaccurate and flawed. I have spoken to him and told him to correct it.” (Translated it means Dr Khir wants Dr Khaidzir to “correct” – which to me, it means ‘skew’ – the findings so as at least not to cast negative image to Dr Khir’s much touted developed status of Selangor). Politics is more important than truth. I regret that not only is Dr Khaidzir prepared to serve politics more than truth, but also has, as accused by BPR, “violated one of the basic tenets of human psychological research i.e. by not ensuring the strictest confidentiality with regards to the private, identifiable information of those who participated in the study” by providing their contact particulars to Dr Khir’s officers to contact 54 of the respondent interviewees, picked at random, for further questioning.

The Selangor MB then sought to discredit the findings by saying Dr Khaidzir “got our population figures wrong and the definition of sex was flawed. On the question of sex … some people say touching with the mouth is sex and rubbing noses is also sex. See, even the definition of sex is not correct,” he said.

Why is Dr Khir trying to discredit methodology and sampling by saying “in the first page he wrote 4.1 million, in second page 4.7 million” (which could have been typo error bearing no relevance) when as what Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said to reporters after launching the Public Higher Learning Institutions’ Expertise Directory, “the sample was provided by the state government to the researcher who had been asked to draw up a training module for problematic students”.

(Here Mustapha is also trying to protect his political image from being dented by insinuations of an incompetent clinical psychologist in a tertiary institution like UKM under his portfolio who might not know how to adopt the right methodology and sampling for a study in relation to the answers it seeks to find).

If Dr Khir questions the correctness of Dr Khaidzir’s methodology in the study, then it can equally be d that Khir’s methodology of having his officers ring the respondents up is even more unreliable. Of course, the girls would deny that they had sex by seeking to explain away that during the survey they thought “touching with mouth is sex and brushing noses is also sex” – they might be thinking that the State Officials were now contacting them to get them for illicit sex, Khalwat or something!

The alternative is unthinkable – the imputation that UKM has a clinical psychologist who supposedly an expert in human behavior not making clear what was sex to the girls surveyed.

Methodology and sampling are not the only problems besetting this study. It’s purpose and conception is as controversial.

If the purpose is to address problems of moral decadence and delinquency amongst youngsters, why is the focus of the study as commissioned by the Selangor State government directed at girls only with great emphasis on sexual experience?

When the State government provided the researchers with a sample of schools, and the school counsellors of these schools were asked to refer cases of female students with disciplinary problems for the study, what does Dr Khir really expect? These students were from broken homes. If they could flout normal school and larger society’s rules like taking drugs, involving in pornography, secret societies, vandalism and truancy, is it reasonable to expect they would abstain from having sex until they left school or preserve their virginity until marriage? What’s the shock?

To the people in the State government, the sex part is the real shocker that is totally unacceptable. After all, we’re living in a cultural milieu that moral policing is fast becoming a norm. Here implicit is the assumption that females are the moral bulwark against sexual profligacy. Teenage boys no matter how sexually promiscuous are not standard bearers of sexual morality, and that is why the study was commissioned, in a misogynist way, to focus on only female respondents, omitting the males and forgetting that it takes two to tango.

What the study shows is that we have a problem of delinquency amongst our youngsters involved in drugs, pornography, secret societies, vandalism, truancy and sex. Whilst delinquency is a part of moral decadence on the part of our youngsters, not enough has been studied about the moral decadence in the larger society of adults especially those in positions of power, status and responsibility.

I suggest that the following are also manifestations of a society in moral decadence requiring study: –

· When truth is not held in importance for its own sake but continuously repudiated or sacrificed for political expedience and goals;

· Where academics in universities will not stand up for their work and conclusions but are prepared to succumb to the pressures of politicians and skew their findings to suit the politician’s agenda;

· Where professionals ignore the professional ethics respecting privileged information and confidentiality of sources;

· Repression of natural biological instinct of sex and narrow obsession with it as the single axis to determine moral virtue or decadence;

· Making women to bear the cross of sexual restraint and foundation of sexual morality, without application of similar standards to men.