KEY POINTS
- A brand new ballot has requested males from 13 international locations how typically they sit down when urinating.
- Australians have been among the many most enthusiastic ‘sitzpinklers’.
- Some take a situational method relating to sitting or standing.
It is a difficulty that is sparked assume items and loads of on-line discussions, and now, a brand new survey claims to have the reply to a query that seems to be on the minds of many: how typically do males sit down when urinating?
Male respondents, aged at the least 18 years outdated, in 13 international locations have been requested how incessantly they did this whereas going to the bathroom to solely wee in a YouGov ballot printed on Tuesday.
When the outcomes have been shared by a Reddit person, they lit up the social media website, the place many discussions on this matter have beforehand taken place.
The query was requested within the wake of by British journalist at The Guardian, Sam Wollaston — a “proud ‘sitzpinkler’” (German for a person who sits all the way down to urinate). In it, he wrote there was “no dependable information” on the difficulty and referred to as for the polling firm to “get on it”.
“In February of this yr, Guardian journalist Sam Wollaston referred to as YouGov out for our lack of knowledge on what number of British males sit all the way down to urinate,” YouGov’s head of knowledge journalism, Matthew Smith, wrote on Tuesday.
“Kicking ourselves for this obvious omission from our Public Knowledge archive, we’ve since performed a 13-country examine on males’s peeing preferences internationally.”
Australian males are enthusiastic ‘sitzpinklers’, in line with the survey, with 25 per cent of respondents saying they at all times sit down to alleviate themselves. That was the best determine behind Germany (40 per cent), the place indicators telling males to sit down all the way down to pee are widespread in public loos.
Mr Wollaston wrote about 70 per cent of his male buddies, largely aged of their 50s, that he posed the query to mentioned they have been “standers”. The ballot discovered 33 per cent of Britons surveyed by no means sat all the way down to take a whizz, though that determine was 40 per cent amongst these aged 55 and over.
Mexican males have been the most certainly to by no means sit to urinate.
Supply: Equipped / YouGov
The ballot was performed from 28 March to twenty April with pattern sizes of round 500 for many international locations, together with Australia, whereas in Britain and the US, the pattern sizes have been round 900 and 700 respectively.
A Reddit person shared the survey outcomes on the social media website’s Australia’s neighborhood in a publish that attracted tons of of feedback. Some have been supportive of the sit-down technique, whereas others have been stunned at what number of Australian respondents indicated they adhered to it.
“Sit down pee man right here. Can verify that it is extra snug,” one Redditor wrote.
Stated one other: “It is so a lot better, by no means have to fret about aiming, by no means any mess to scrub up. all males ought to sit down imo (in my view).”
There have been additionally those that took a situational method when deciding whether or not to pee standing up or sitting down.
“I at all times sit when at work. Boss makes a greenback, what I earn is a criminal offense… that is why I am chilling within the lavatory on firm time,” one person wrote.
“I used to face.. however then I began sitting down and haven’t regarded again since (aside from in public bathrooms),” one other mentioned.
Some mentioned sitting down additionally had well being advantages, and for some males, this is likely to be true.
A 2014 meta-analysis — wherein the outcomes of a lot of earlier research are summarised — by researchers from the Division of Urology at Leiden College Medical Heart within the Netherlands discovered for males with decrease urinary tract signs, “the sitting voiding place is preferable to the standing”.
But it surely additionally concluded: “There may be medically no superior posture for wholesome males to urinate in.”
SBS Information has contacted YouGov for remark.