Wow, to be a paid researcher in America to study the sexual behaviors of Americans. Now that’s an enticing job. Where do I sign up?
Apparently I’d pop on over to Indiana University, as that’s where the latest batch of researchers come from who have something to say about sex in America.
As a part of the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, researchers surveyed a national, representative sample of 5,865 people ages 14 to 94. They recently published some of their initial findings in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.
So without further ado, here are 11 surprising facts about sex in America from that survey.
1. Condom use is pretty uncommon.
Only 1 in 4 acts of sexual intercourse are protected by a condom. Condoms are, of course, the most reliable method to avoid sexually transmitted diseases while having sex.
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“Instead, we see many discrepancies. For instance, 70 percent of women claimed to have received oral sex from a man in the 20 to 24 age group, but only 55 percent of men admitted to having given oral to a woman. Sixty-two percent of men aged 40 to 49 claimed they received oral, but only 53 percent of women said they gave it.”
These are only discrepancies on the assumption that men and women are arranged in monogamous one-to-one pairs that never change. This is of course not the case, and not just because there are homosexuals. The two ‘discrepancies’ cited here could each be explained by the hypothesis — prima facie a plausible one — that people who perform oral sex tend to be more than averagely promiscuous. So those 70 percent of women received oral sex from those 55 percent of men, etc.
>So those 70 percent of women received oral sex from
>those 55 percent of men, etc.
Yep; I had exactly the same initial reactions – we simply can’t draw such easy conclusions from this data.
This is the problem with self-reports,the researchers never know if the person reporting is being truthful.
people who perform oral sex tend to be more than averagely promiscuous
I don’t think this is a very good hypothesis to start with. You just can’t pick one piece of data and not challenge the hypothesis.
What does “averagely promiscuous” mean?
70% 55% 53% said they gave it, so the majority are more than “averagely promiscuous” ?
People, take YOUR time, enjoy. Most important is to be comfortable in your own skin.
Just want to point out that discrepancies may also be caused by unfaithfulness to a partner. More guys or girls (depending on what’s “in style”) may be having sexual activity than the other gender based on cheating in relationships. Just want to put that out there.
English is not my first language so I might have missed some relevant data but it seems to me the author assumed people only have sex with people within their age group. Couldn’t the discrepancies have been caused by for example 20 year olds having sex with 40 year olds etc.?
Interesting that women 20-24 have much more sexual encounters with women then in any age group and that is the college age. Must be doing it to impress guys or drunken experimentation’s because then it goes down in ages older then that and its probably a one time thing.