 The idea that research should start from the lived experiences of those who are studied suggests an ethnographic approach and it is perhaps for this reason feminists have been thought to favor qualitative methods. But the frequent use of statistical (quantitative) methods used to support feminist goals belies this idea. Londa Schiebinger offers an example from primatology. In the 1970s Jeanne Altmann (1974) used representative sampling techniques to effectively change research. The opportunistic sampling that this approach replaced failed to note the frequency and duration of behavior among primates and so gave a distorted picture of primate life, emphasizing high drama events centering around reproduction and male conflict over commonplace events. The role of females in the group and family life had thus been overlooked (Schiebinger 1999: 7).