The study of sexual behavior in relation to the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus: Caveats and recommendations.

Abstract

To create the behavior-change programs essential for limiting the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic, we must obtain a precise understanding of the sexual behavior, knowledge, and attitudes of our nation's various ethnic, racial, social age, regional, and sexual orientation groups. Such information is necessary for developing the precisely targeted educational programs that currently are our most effective means of reducing risk behaviors and halting the spread of the disease in the United States. These behavioral data are also crucial to biomedical investigations, making possible the identification of appropriate subjects for programs ranging from the testing of vaccines to the evaluation of the threat to pregnant women and their offspring. In this article, we summarize data on sexual behaviors associated with the transmission of the AIDS virus (i.e., human immunodeficiency virus [HIV]) and discuss selected issues relevant to the conduct of research on human sexuality. 1 Sixteen studies and commercial surveys were selected: (a) Athanasiou, Shaver, and Tavris (1970); (b) Bell, Turner, and Rosen (1975); (c)

Partner-specific sexual practices among heterosexual men and women with multiple partners: Results from the French national survey, ACSF

“…It is striking that significant differences were always due to higher reporting by men than by women. However, opposite results have been found concerning oral (Gagnon and Simon, 1987) and anal (Reinisch et al, 1988) sex, for which we did not find any differences.…”

“…Exposure to infected partners depends on the type of partner (Aral, 1991), and nonregular partners are considered as more likely to be infected (De Vroome et al, 1990;Evans et aL, 1991;Reinisch et al, 1988;Upchurch et al, 1992). Our analysis shows that, though uncommon, protected vaginal penetration was more frequent with a casual partner than with the main one.…”

Sex Differences in the Flexibility of Sexual Orientation: A Multidimensional Retrospective Assessment

“…These dimensional components were selected for several reasons. First, within-participants differences on ratings of these dimensions have been documented in a number of studies (e.g., Bell & Weinberg, 1978;Berkey, Peral-Hall, & Kurdek, 1990;Reinisch, Sanders, & Ziemba-Davis, 1988, Stokes, McKirnan, & Burzette, 1993. Further, these dimensions have been found to discriminate between categories of sexual orientation (heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual) (Snyder, Weinrich, & Pillard, 1994) and closely correspond to the three most commonly occurring elements in conceptual definitions of sexual orientation found in the sexual orientation literature (Shively, Jones, & DeCecco, 1983).…”

The sexual behavior of US adults: results from a national survey.

“…' Information on these behaviors is necessary not only for mathematical modeling of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission2 but for understanding the cultural context of sexual activity in order to inform educational efforts to prevent AIDS. 3,4 Yet such data on the US population are sorely lacking. For example, the distribution of the number of sexual contacts (both current and new partners) among individuals in the US population is currently unknown.5 This lack of current data has meant that public health officials have often been forced to use data collected by Kinsey and colleagues6 in their estimates ofthe number of individuals currently infected with HIV, despite the fact that these data are now more than 40 years old and fraught with a number of important limitations, including problems of sampling and interview design.…”