Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age, United States, 2002
William D. Mosher, Anjani Chandra and Jo Jones

This report is intended to provide reliable national estimates of some basic statistics on certain types of sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and sexual attraction for men and women 15-44 years of age, based on data collected in the United States in 2002. The data are relevant to public health concerns, including efforts to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and to demographic and social concerns such as birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers. The data are from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), and are based on 12,571 in-person interviews with men and women 15-44 years of age. At ages 15-19, about 12 percent of males and 10 percent of females had had heterosexual oral sex but not vaginal intercourse. (The male-female percentages are not significantly different.) This percent drops to 3 percent for both males and females at age 22-24, when most have already had vaginal intercourse. There are no trend data for females. Trend data for males suggest that no large changes in these behaviors have occurred since 1995.


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