This is going to be a fun news peg for the day—-researchers at Indiana University (where the Kinsey Institute is located), funded by Trojan condoms (a company I say actually does good work in tying its profit motive to the larger social good) have put out a new sexual behavior survey, the largest of its kind since 1994. They interviewed 5,865 Americans aged 14 to 94 about their sexual habits. A lot of what they found wasn’t surprising—-most people have a combination of things they do in bed, the older people are the less they use condoms (in part, because they’re more likely to be married), the percentage of women who had sex with a woman in the past year is twice as high in the 20-24 age group than in any other, and while 8% of men identify as gay or bisexual, nearly twice as many as that have had oral sex with another man.
Thought I’d pull some of the findings out for comment.
According to the study’s findings, 1 of 4 acts of vaginal intercourse are condom protected in the U.S. (1 in 3 among singles).
This is a hard statistic to read, because the non-condom-using group combines people who have chosen to go condom-free because they’re in low risk situations. Two out of three single people going without a condom, for instance, includes people who ditch the condom during a one night stand and the people who are in long-term, committed, disease-free relationships that simply haven’t resulted in marriage. The researchers are right to say this means that there needs to be more promotion of condom use, but we need more targeted information in terms of who is not using condoms when they really should be. There’s nothing wrong with a two-pronged education strategy that suggests some people need to use condoms and some don’t, and helping people honestly and accurately assess which group they belong to.
This result is getting a lot of coverage:
When it comes to responsible sexual behaviors, condom use is higher among black and Hispanic Americans than among white Americans and those from other racial groups.
The AP suggests targeted public health campaigns have a lot to do with this. I would also point out that the younger people are, the more likely they are to use condoms, and the percentage of the population that is black or Hispanic is much bigger in the younger groups than the older groups. Age is one of the most important factors in whether someone uses condoms or not. Men over 50 reported the lowest rates of condom use. Again, this may not be that big a deal, since part of the reason is that these men are likelier to be in monogamous, disease-free relationships. Still, many aren’t, and the low rate can also be explained in part by older men having grown up in a world where looking after sexual health was deemed strictly a woman’s responsibility.
Now for the comedy section of the program: