Extramarital sex and HIV risk behavior among US adults: results from the National AIDS Behavioral Survey.

Abstract

IntrodudionIn the United States, the norm of sexual monogamy asserts considerable influence on relationships ranging from state-sanctioned marriages to less formal dating relationships. For married couples, the norm of sexual monogamy holds considerable sway at the attitudinal level,' but behavioral adherence to this norm is less rigid. An estimated 26% to 50% of men and 21% to 38% of women have reported at least one lifetime occurrence of extramarital sex. cases (total unweighted n = 8263, married n = 3197; response rate = 65%), and a special Hispanic urban sample (total unweighted n = 4511, married n = 2343; cooperation rate = 79%) (for demographics, see Table 1).Extramarital sex was defined as having more than one partner during the year prior to the survey based on the following question: "Over the past 12 months, how many different people have you had either vaginal or anal intercourse with?" (0.2% nonresponse across samples). Since types of sexual partners were not ascertained, some respondents who had only one sexual partner, but whose partner was not their spouse, may have been misclassified as maritally monogamous. Also, those who changed during the 12-month reporting period from marital monogamy to nonmonogamy following divorce or the death of their spouse could not be distinguished from those who were married and nonmonogamous in tandem. We focused on condom use during all acts of vaginal intercourse over the previous 6 months since all extramarital sex respondents were having vaginal intercourse. Six-month estimates of sexual behavior have been shown to have good reliability and validity.843 Condom use was categorized into three groups: never (0%), sometimes (1% to 99%), and always (100%).To examine the correlates of extramarital sex, we restricted our analysis to married 18-to 49-year-olds since this age group allowed us to use both the urban sample and the large

The continuing HIV epidemic among men who have sex with men

“…44,45 Furthermore, telephone surveys of adults produce estimates similar to those obtained through in-person face-to-face and self-administered questionnaires for many highly sensitive behaviors, including samesex sexual intercourse, extramarital sexual intercourse, and high-risk sexual behaviors. 13,46,47 In addition, we compared estimates for the proportion of MSM from the present study with those from 2 prior in-person face-to-face probability-based sample surveys of MSM in San Francisco, controlling for zip code, and found extremely similar results (30% Urban Men's Health Study; 28%-30% San Francisco Men's Health Study and San Francisco Young Men's Health Study 3,4 ). Despite these findings, we acknowledge that unwillingness to reveal sexual orientation may be a concern of unknown dimensions across all types of interview contexts.…”

Predictors of Sexual Distress in Women with Desire and Arousal Difficulties: Distinguishing Between Personal, Partner, and Interpersonal Distress

“…Sexual communication within the current relationship was assessed by means of the 4-item short version of the Dyadic Sexual Communication Questionnaire (DSC). [35][36][37] The original scale uses six-point Likert scales, but to remain consistent with other response items in the Sexpert-survey, we used a five-point Likert scale. 26 A higher score indicates more frequently experiencing difficulties discussing sexual topics with one's partner (Cronbach´s ɑ=.71).…”

HIV/AIDS: Risk & protective behaviors among adults ages 21 to 40 in the U.S., 2004-2016

“…However, the only other item on substance use (use of any illegal drugs in the past 12 months) has not been asked since 2004 (Davis & Smith, 2007). The majority of HIV/AIDS publications from the GSS have reported on sexual risk behaviors (Anderson, 2003;Anderson et al, 2003;Choi et al, 1994;Johnen et al, 1995). Given that substance use behaviors are not consistently collected in the GSS and needle sharing is not measured, MTF provides an important additional source for data that look at the intersection of these behaviors with other HIV/AIDS risk and protective factors.…”