Changes

Wherever I have quoted the figures obtained from these M.1 mouth interviews in the body of the book I have made it amply clear that these interviewees do not constitute a random sample. So for instance in Chapter 1 I make it quite plain that the 685 people reporting their parents' attitude when they first hitched are simply 685 people I met at the end of the motorway. They are not a statistically valid or trustworthy sample. When I say that a third of them had parents who more or less approved of hitch-hiking, I mean a third of them, not a presumptive third of hitch-hikers in Britain. Given that they are nearly 700 people though, I do feel that their evidence has a bearing on the discussion of hitch-hiking in the context of parent-child conflict. In other words I advance the evidence from this group as a valid part of my informed impression. I am however not trying to make a scientific generalisation.