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Summary of sexual behaviour research

The National Opinion Research Centre of America (sponsored by the University of Chicago) conducted a survey in 1988 and 1989 in which they asked questions about men and women's sexual behaviour. There is much more information of value about sexual habits to be gained from this survey (and of course such surveys can show how sexual behaviour changes as time goes by). For example, in 1989, 97 percent of adult Americans over the age of 18 had had sexual intercourse. The survey reported that those men and women who answered its questions said that they'd had on average 1.2 sexual partners during the year before the survey; and in total they'd had nearly 7.2 partners since age 18; unfortunately, as is often the case in these surveys, men claimed to have had considerably more sexual partners than women. This rather negates the findings! Other findings:

• About one adult American in twenty said they had no sexual partners during the year before the survey.

• On average, adults report having sexual intercourse 57 times per year.

• About 5 percent of men and women said they had been homosexual or bisexual since age 18.

Information about the survey into American sexual behaviour

Sexual behaviour is not much studied in America, a fact which probably reflects that nation's prurience in such matters. In 1988 and 1989, the National Opinion Research Centre gave a short, self-administered questionnaire to many recipients of its more regular surveys. This included questions about how often respondents had sexual intercourse, how many partners they had (and of what sex they were).

These were fairly superficial questions, but they do allow us to draw some conclusions about elements of sexual behaviour among the American population. These are the main points which came out of the survey......

Number of sexual partners

On average, adult Americans said they had had 1.16 sexual partners during the year before the survey was conducted. As mentioned above, men reported rather more partners than women, due undoubtedly to men over-exaggerating their sexual "prowess" and women reporting fewer sexual partners than they actually have. (We have discussed this elsewhere on our websites. When you give men and women the opportunity to answer the questions anonymously and in secret, the number of sexual partners claimed by each sex is more or less equal, so the failure to establish this here can probably be put down to poor research methodology.)

As you would expect, married men and women report far fewer  sexual partners than unmarried respondents in the year preceding the survey. And also rather unsurprisingly, widowed men and women reported the fewest sexual  partners - on average 0.21; married people reported around 1.0 sexual partner; the divorced said they'd had 1.31 sexual partners; those who had never been married reported 1.84 sexual partners; and those who were separated reported having 2.41 sexual partners. This may reflect the fact that they were dating.

Interestingly, the number of sexual partners declines with age: from 1.76 sexual partners among men and women under 30 years of age to around 0.35 sexual partners among men and women older than 70. Race, education or region of residence has very little effect on the number of sexual partners that people report, although those living in urban areas have slightly more sexual partners, on average, than those who do not.

About 22 percent of adult Americans (where this is defined as being over 18 years of age) claimed to have had no sexual partners during the year preceding the survey. This seems rather higher than one would expect, although the results do seem to have been validly transcribed from the survey responses - whether respondents were answering the questions truthfully is another issue! Abstinence was more commonly reported by women than men - which may reflect prevailing social issues in America - while abstinence occurred least often among the currently married (nine percent of whom reported not having sexual intercourse in the year preceding the survey), and most often among the widowed (86 percent).

Whether you believe it or not, 13 percent of those younger than 30 years of age reported abstaining from sex while only seven percent among those aged 30-39 had done so. Abstinence is higher among the less-well educated, but is unrelated to race and other social factors.

The number of sexual partners that people reported since age 18 is an interesting result. All in all, adults said they'd had an average of 7.15 sexual partners since age 18, although this overall number disguises a slightly ludicrous difference between men and women in the number of sexual partners they claimed: 12.3 vs. 3.3! Leaving this dissembling aside, and assuming that the other data has any basis in reality, there is a complicated relationship between age and number of sexual partners. Among those men and women younger than 30 the respondents' claimed number of lifetime sexual partners is 6.1; among those aged 40-49, it is 9.7; however, among those older than 70 the number is 3.5  This must represent a combination of greater experience with age for those born in the last few decades and a different social culture for the older generations where having multiple sexual partners was less accessible or even possible.

Of course the issue of marital fidelity is always interesting.