Teenage Sex Statistics

A team from La Trobe University's Australian Research Centre conduct a national survey of Australian adolescent sexuality every five years. The 1997 survey found:

• by Year 10 three-quarters of students had experienced  passionate kissing, half to two-thirds had experienced sexual touching, and 29% had had full sexual intercourse.
• by Year 12 48% had had full sexual intercourse
• 8-12% of young people reported being attracted to someone of the same sex. It is not known how many in this group go on to consider themselves homosexual
• Year 10 girls were three times as likely as Year 10 boys to report they felt "guilty" after their last sexual encounter, four times as likely to feel "worried" and ten times as likely to feel "used", yet also 50% more likely to report that they feel 'loved" after sex.

Liz Hammond, the youth team leader at FPA Health (the former Family Planning Association) says that research shows young women who look back on their first sexual encounters in hindsight would not have made the decision to be sexually active when they did.

World Health Organisation research indicates that good quality sex education makes teenagers more likely to defer having sex.

About 23% of teenagers fit the psychological profile of "risk takers". This group are more likely than others to be having early, promiscuous or unprotected sex; to be  binge drinking and using drugs.

Source: Reported in Sydney Morning Herald "Insight" column Tuesday August 21, 2001.
Applications: teenagers, sex