Survey Shows Everything We Don’t Know About Sex

Sex may be on the minds of nearly everybody, but a new Kinsey Institute survey finds that most Americans don’t know much about it.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed flunked a test of basic sexual knowledge, Kinsey Director June Reinisch said today.

Only about 25% knew that the typical American has first intercourse at age 16 or 17, or that an estimated 30% to 40% of married men have had an extramarital affair, the report showed.

Only 21% knew that more than a quarter of American men have had a sexual experience with another male as an adolescent or adult.

The poll’s 18 questions were drawn from those most often asked of the Kinsey Institute and represent facts that “people need to know for both their physical health and their mental health,” Reinisch said in an interview.

Overall there were no differences in accuracy by sex, but men did better on questions about rates of sexual behavior and women on questions about sexual health care and contraception, she said.

The poll results emphasize a need for sex education of pre-adolescent children and of medical school students, because the poll found people turn to doctors for sex information, she said.

Questions dealt with a variety of topics, including circumstances under which pregnancy is possible, erection problems, health and masturbation.

A person flunked the test by getting fewer than 10 of the 18 questions correct. Fewer than 20% got at least 12 questions right, and only five people of the 1,974 polled answered at least 16 questions correctly, Reinisch said.