According to data from Pew Research Center and the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 96.6 million single Americans. Just 51 percent of the adult population is married, compared with 72 percent in 1960. And a recent Pew/Time Magazine survey found that 39 percent of people think marriage is becoming obsolete.


Our survey was by no means scientific, but it helps to know from whom these responses are coming. The average age of our survey participants was 46.2 years old. Women made up 82 percent of the respondents; men, 18 percent. About 35 percent said their annual income was under $50,000; 41 percent were making between $50,000 and $100,000; and 23 percent bring in more than $100,000 a year.

The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.

When viewing lesbian sex and straight sex, both the homophobic and the non-homophobic men showed increased penis circumference. For gay male sex, however, only the homophobic men showed heightened penis arousal.

Heterosexual men with the most anti-gay attitudes, when asked, reported not being sexually aroused by gay male sex videos. But, their penises reported otherwise.

Homophobic men were the most sexually aroused by gay male sex acts.

Methods.  PubMed search for articles published between 1950 and 2011 using key words “G-spot,”“Grafenberg spot,”“vaginal innervation,”“female orgasm,”“female erogenous zone,” and “female ejaculation.” Clinical trials, meeting abstracts, case reports, and review articles that were written in English and published in a peer-reviewed journal were selected for analysis.

Main Outcome Measure.  The main outcome measure of this article was to assess any valid objective data in the literature that scientifically evaluates the existence of an anatomically distinct G-spot.

Results.  The literature cites dozens of trials that have attempted to confirm the existence of a G-spot using surveys, pathologic specimens, various imaging modalities, and biochemical markers. The surveys found that a majority of women believe a G-spot actually exists, although not all of the women who believed in it were able to locate it. Attempts to characterize vaginal innervation have shown some differences in nerve distribution across the vagina, although the findings have not proven to be universally reproducible. Furthermore, radiographic studies have been unable to demonstrate a unique entity, other than the clitoris, whose direct stimulation leads to vaginal orgasm.

Conclusions.  Objective measures have failed to provide strong and consistent evidence for the existence of an anatomical site that could be related to the famed G-spot. However, reliable reports and anecdotal testimonials of the existence of a highly sensitive area in the distal anterior vaginal wall raise the question of whether enough investigative modalities have been implemented in the search of the G-spot.

This survey is seeking comments on whether or not to make contraceptives available at the School-Based Health Center (SBHC).

The SBHC is a health clinic located on the Tigard High School campus. It is open to all students living in the Tigard-Tualatin School District and is one of three in the county. Opened since 2008, it is operated as a partnership with Washington County, Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center and Lifeworks NW.

It is self-supported financially through payment of sliding scale fees, private health insurance and the Oregon Health Plan.

The SBHC currently provides reproductive health services as a requirement of its certification, however, contraceptives are not dispensed.

Among the services it provides are:
• Diagnosis and treatment of minor illness, infection and injury (such as skin infections, bronchitis, sinusitis); health screening and referral; Immunizations;
• Dental Screening and monthly dental van
• Communicable disease control;
• Assistance in managing chronic illness such as asthma or diabetes in cooperation with students’ primary care provider; lab tests to monitor health conditions;
• Physical examinations; Sports physicals
• Mental health assessment and referrals,
• Counseling and family support;
• Substance abuse assessment and referral; tobacco prevention and cessation information;
• Wellness and lifestyle education and support.

Researchers in America questioned 18 and 19-year-old men who were starting their first year of college.

They asked a total of 78 teenagers, who were mostly heterosexual and from high-income families, about their health and attitudes towards safe-sex practices such as condom use.

Researchers also took a saliva sample from the men from which they could measure their testosterone levels.

And despite young, testosterone-fulled men often being portrayed negatively in terms of their sexual behaviour, the study found that the complete opposite could be true.

The results revealed that those men with the highest levels of testosterone were more likely to have a positive attitude towards condoms.

Today’s 18- to 29-year-olds value parenthood far more than marriage, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of attitudinal surveys.

A 2010 Pew Research survey found that 52% of Millennials say being a good parent is “one of the most important things” in life. Just 30% say the same about having a successful marriage– meaning there is a 22 percentage point gap in the way Millennials value parenthood over marriage.

When this same question was posed to 18- to 29-year-olds in 1997, the gap was just 7 percentage points. Back then, 42% of the members of what is known as Generation X said being a good parent was one of the most important things in life, while 35% said the same about having a successful marriage.

Cyclists of both genders are less likely than average to have sex on a first date, according to survey by a dating website. The finding stands out because elsewhere in the survey, conducted by FreeDating.co.uk among 10,000 of its members, clear divisions are found between men and women.

In terms of body shape, for example, overweight women are more likely than those described as slim or simply large to finish the evening in bed with a new partner, while among men, it is those described as being of athletic build.

Women who said they are interested in cars and spend time in bars were also more likely to say that they would have sex on a first date, while in terms of level of education, it is better educated men but less well educated women who do so.

Married men who are members of the site were also more keen on getting into bed on the first date than single ones – a bit of a no-brainer, we imagine, since you they’re unlikely to have joined up with thoughts of bigamy on their mind.

Unsurprisingly, the survey doesn’t record whether they are up front with their prospective partners beforehand, nor what their wives think of their behaviour. The website itself says that it “actively discourages” married people from signing up, and asks those that do to at least be honest about their status in their profile.

And as for cyclists – well, respondents who said they have an interest in cycling, across both genders, were less likely than average to put out on a first date, putting them alongside those in their 40s and above, as well as non-drinkers, as groups where being male or female made no difference to the response.

Drawing on a telephone survey of 1,500 youth, Janis Wolak and colleagues present some data giving us a clue.  They find that less than half (42%) of 10- to 17-year-old internet users had seen online pornography in the last year.  Most of them that had, further, had not sought it out.  The majority (66%) had come across the pornography by accident (e.g., they had entered a porn site without meaning to, been emailed an explicit image, or seen a pop up).

The image below shows unwanted and wanted exposure to pornography for boys as they age.  Only 1% of the boys 10- to 11-years-old had sought out pornography, by 12-13 about one in ten have done so, and by 16-17 over 1/3rd have (38%).  Unwanted pornography is a problem for boys of all ages. Seventeen percent of boys 10-11 encountered unwanted porn and this number increased as the boys aged.


Few girls seek out pornography: 2% of 10- 11-year-olds had sought out pornography, rising to 8% by 16-17. Girls have the same problem with unwanted exposure to pornography; it happens about as frequently as it does for boys among 10- 13-year-olds and even more often among 14- 17-year-olds.

Eight percent of college men have either attempted or successfully raped. Thirty percent say they would rape if they could get away with it. When the wording was changed to “force a woman to have sex,” the number jumped to 58%. Worse still, 83.5% argue that “some women look like they are just asking to be raped."
Margo Maine, Ph.D. (Body Wars)

The difference in attitudes between those aged 18 to 34 and those aged 55 and older was stark when it came to pornography, with 42 percent of the younger group polled by Gallup saying that it was morally acceptable, in contrast to 19 percent of those in the older group.
In general, Americans in the "broadest" sense agreed on certain behaviors they believe are morally wrong, Gallup reported.
For example, at least eight in 10 U.S. adults interviewed in the survey said extramarital affairs, polygamy, cloning humans and suicide were wrong, while least six in 10 people surveyed said pornography and cloning animals were morally wrong, Jones said.
On the question of gay and lesbian relationships, 66 percent of younger Americans said they were moral — 13 percentage points higher than among the older cohort.
While there is no final tally on the number of lesbian, gay, or bisexual Americans, those surveyed believe the number was higher than nine years ago, with half of those polled saying at least 20 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian.

When it comes to premarital sex, Americans aged 18 to 34 were even more enthusiastic, with 71 percent approving. But just 47 percent of older Americans approved of sex before marriage.

55 percent of Democrats, for example, said abortion was acceptable, while only 18 percent of Republicans believed abortion was morally OK.

Keisling, who was speaking to students who attended the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference, shared many somber statistics from the NCTE's survey on transgender discrimination, which was released in February and was also created with the help of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The survey is the largest ever conducted of transgender individuals, and it takes a frightening snapshot of the difficulties faced by nearly 6500 transgender people in the U.S. "We tried to find bigger studies," Keisling said. "This is the biggest study."

The survey results show that transgender individuals face serious barriers to meeting their basic needs, starting with employment. Ninety percent of survey respondents reported being harassed, mistreated or discriminated against on the job. Another 47 percent reported being fired, not hired or denied a promotion. These workplace struggles mean that transgender individuals are four times more likely to live in poverty (less than $10,000 a year) than the general population.

They're also twice as likely to be homeless as the general population. And of the survey respondents who had experienced homelessness, more than half had been turned away from a shelter.

I am the Chief Research Officer of Conversition Strategies, a social media research company built by researchers for researchers.

decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.

While many studies show that secular Americans don’t fare as well as the religious when it comes to certain indicators of mental health or subjective well-being, new scholarship is showing that the relationships among atheism, theism, and mental health and well-being are complex. After all, Denmark, which is among the least religious countries in the history of the world, consistently rates as the happiest of nations. And studies of apostates — people who were religious but later rejected their religion — report feeling happier, better and liberated in their post-religious lives.

Some studies suggest that suicide rates are higher among the non-religious. But surveys indicating that religious Americans are better off can be misleading because they include among the non-religious fence-sitters who are as likely to believe in God, whereas atheists who are more convinced are doing about as well as devout believers. On numerous respected measures of societal success — rates of poverty, teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, drug use and crime, as well as economics — high levels of secularity are consistently correlated with positive outcomes in first-world nations. None of the secular advanced democracies suffers from the combined social ills seen here in Christian America.

Asked to evaluate the reasons they got married, married respondents place the greatest value on love (93% say this is a very important reason), followed by making a lifelong commitment (87%), companionship (81%), having children (59%), and, at the bottom of the list, financial stability (31%). Unmarried adults order the reasons the same way when asked to evaluate why they would consider getting married. But if economic security is no longer a key reason people marry, the lack of economic security nonetheless appears to be a key reason people don't get married. In 1960, there was virtually no difference by socio-economic status in the proclivity to marry: 76% of college graduates and 72% of adults who did not attend college were married. By 2008, that small gap had widened to a chasm: 64% of college graduates were married, compared with just 48% of those with a high school diploma or less. During this same period, the income gap between the well-educated and the less-educated -- and between the rich and poor -- also widened substantially. A 2010 Pew Research survey finds that among the unmarried, there are no significant differences by education or income in the desire to get married; just under half of the college educated (46%) and those who have a high school diploma or less (44%) would like to get married. Likewise, roughly similar shares of the unmarried who earn above and below $100,000 a year would like to marry. But the survey also finds that the less education and income people have, the more likely they are to say that in order to be a good marriage prospect, a person must be able to support a family financially.

The government-funded research looked at the risks for sex, alcohol, illegal drugs, or suicide attempts reported by more 9,000 high school students who took part in a nationwide survey.

The study looked at the heaviest high school kids -- the ones who top the growth charts for their height and weight and have a body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to the 99th percentile. That starts around 220 pounds for a 15-year-old of average height.

Extremely obese girls were about twice as likely as slimmer students as to have ever tried cigarettes or to be current smokers.

Extremely obese boys were about 50% more likely than their normal-weight counterparts to have ever tried cigarettes or to have started smoking before age 13.

Although heavy girls were about half as likely as their slimmer peers to have ever had sex, when they did have intercourse, they were nearly five times more likely to do so under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on sexual behavior that used this technique with laptops to gather data on Americans’ sexual behavior, attraction and identity by age, marital status, education and race.

The researchers got a 75 percent response rate, very high for a household survey, when they interviewed more than 13,000 people ages 15 to 44 from 2006 to 2008.

They found a large reduction in sexual activity among young adults ages 15 to 24. According to the survey, about 29 percent of women and 27 percent of men had not had sexual contact with the opposite sex. This was a sharp increase from 2002, when about 23 percent of young adults had never had sex.

Among men and women older than 25, about 99 percent had had vaginal intercourse. About 90 percent of men and 89 percent of women had had heterosexual oral sex, and 44 percent of men and 36 percent of women had had anal sex with an opposite-sex partner.

Forty-year-old virgins were rare: In the 40-to-44 age group, only 1 percent of men and even fewer women had never had relations with the opposite sex. But in the 15-to-19-year-old group, 43 percent of males and 48 percent of females reported never having an opposite-sex partner.

Over all, about 13 percent of women and 5 percent of men reported same-sex sexual behavior.

Location-based services, including Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places, have seen heavy adoption in recent years as more Americans have moved from standard mobile phones to smartphones that come with GPS. But not everyone is persuaded of their benefits.

Nielsen said women who download at least one mobile application to their phone each month showed the highest concern about location apps. The report says that 59 percent of women reported having privacy concerns with these services; 52 percent of men reported the same concerns. Only 8 percent of women and 12 percent of men were not concerned with location-based services and happily engage with them. The remaining people surveyed said they were indifferent.

Age also played a factor in the research. “Mobile app downloaders between the ages of 25-34 were the least likely to have privacy concerns,” Nielsen said. “Privacy concerns were considerably higher among those over the age of 45.”

Yesterday, the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, CNN released a poll that showed that 25 percent of the general public and some 40 percent of Southerners sympathize more with the rebellious Confederacy than with the Union. And in a particularly revealing inversion of the historical record--more than half of the Republicans surveyed believe that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War.

Not content to merely support an insurrection against the duly elected government of the United States, 80 percent of the Republicans surveyed by CNN also expressed admiration for the leaders of the South--a cabal whose allegiance to white supremacy was most tellingly summed up by the Vice President of the Confederacy's sentiment that its, "...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.”

An estimated 9 million Americans -- or nearly 4 percent of the total population -- say they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to a new report released this week from the Williams Institute, a think-tank devoted to LGBT research at UCLA.

Bisexuals make up slightly more than half that group, 1.8 percent of the total U.S. population, and they are substantially more likely to be women than men.

The report is the most up-to-date assessment of that population and produced a lower population percentage than the 10 percent number that advocacy groups have used in the past, which was based on Alfred Kinsey studies from 1948.

The new data comes on the heels of another recent report published by the Institute of Medicine for the National Institutes of Health emphasizing the need for more federally funded research on LGBT health problems.

Other key findings were that an estimated 19 million Americans, or 8.2 percent of the population, said they have engaged in same-sex behavior, and 25.6 million, or 11 percent, acknowledged some same-sex attraction.

The 3.5 percent of those who identify as LGB may or may not include those who are "closeted," according to Gates. "We actually did commission data within the survey and asked about to what degree they were closeted," Gates said, "and 13 percent who identified as LGB had never told anyone about it."
Among bisexuals, who made up about half of the overall LGB population, 25 percent said they were closeted.

Gates also cautioned against the results that 11 percent of all Americans had same-sex attractions. "That was only from one survey and it was restricted to 18- to 44-year-olds," he said.

Psychologist Geoffrey Beattie, from Manchester University, reviewed 56 studies into male and female communication and discovered that 24 concluded men used more words per day – while only two pointed to women being the more talkative sex.

Professor Beattie then carried out his own study, recording 50 conversations on a variety of topics before giving volunteers scripts of the exchanges with every fifth word missing and asking them to fill in the gaps.

The words spoken by women were harder to guess because they used language more carefully, said the professor.

Overall, the men’s words could be guessed 81 per cent of the time, compared with 71 percent for the women.

The only time the sexes were verbal equals was when talking about current affairs, the research for insurance company Sheilas’ Wheels found.

The purpose of this blog is to engage and maintain a meaningful discussion on ethical problem solving in the human-centered/user research field. Rather than offer prescriptive solutions as to how we can embody the ethical treatment of humans in our research, we are hoping to keep the discussion a living breathing entity within the field, centered around debate and dissemination.

We need to remain cognizant of the nature of our work. We are hoping to engage practitioners in discussing the competing good of research to improve design and make useful products, and the ethical treatment of human subjects.

In total 1,247 respondents, ages 14 to 24, were interviewed. The survey was fielded online from September 11 through September 25, 2009, and the mean survey length was approximately 15 minutes.

As part of its multi-year public affairs campaign to address the emerging issue of teen digital abuse, MTV partnered with the AP on a study that provides an in depth look at the prevalence of digital abuse among young people today. This research was designed to quantify how young people are affected by and respond to issues like sexting, digital harassment and digital dating abuse.

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS is the most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage.

The researchers surveyed 3,240 men and 3,304 women who were married, living with a partner or in a relationship, asking them about their satisfaction with their sex lives. A majority of men (54 percent) and nearly as many women (42 percent) said they were unhappy with the frequency of sex, according to the report, published in the March issue of The Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.

For most men, the complaint was that they weren’t having sex often enough. Among women who were unhappy about the frequency of their sex lives, two-thirds said they weren’t having enough sex, but a third complained they were having more sex than they wanted.

Among the respondents, 73 percent were married, and 60 percent had been with their spouse or partner for 10 years or more. Men ages 35 to 44 who had been with a woman for six years or longer were the most likely to be unhappy with how often they had sex.

Men and women who were unhappy with the frequency of sex in their relationship were also most likely to report lower levels of overall relationship satisfaction.

New findings show that a one-percentage-point increase in the jobless rate cuts the predicted mortality rate of people in their 30s by almost 2 per cent. It also lowers the death rate for women close to retirement.

The data suggests “a strong relationship between unemployment and mortality rates of middle-aged Canadians,” said Wilfrid Laurier University economics professors Hideki Ariizumi and Tammy Schirle, whose study will appear in a report by the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network later this month.

They analyzed Statistics Canada mortality rates from 1977 to 2009 along with unemployment rates. The conclusion isn’t identical to U.S. research. South of the border, recessions tend to cut mortality rates of infants and seniors (perhaps because more people qualify for Medicaid, or because out-of-work mothers have more time to spent with their infants). In Canada the effect is most pronounced among the middle-aged.

The paper doesn’t specifically determine why death rates fall when times are hard for people in their 30s. But previous evidence has found that individuals may be less likely to engage in risky behaviour (such as heavy drinking and reckless driving) during recessions and are more likely to adopt healthy behaviour, such as exercising more.

Prior U.S. studies show that a one-percentage-point increase in state unemployment rates is associated with a 0.5- to 0.6-per-cent drop in state mortality rates.

People also tend to sleep more when the economy is tanking. The paper cites a University of Ottawa study last year which showed that during recessions, average sleep times are 22 minutes longer among 20- to 69-year-olds than when the economy is faring better.

Research results are not uniform in showing that recessions improve health outcomes. Some U.S. studies have shown that a job loss for a middle-aged man tends to result in a one- to 1.5-year-drop in life expectancy, though the effect is minimal for workers near retirement age.

A 2004 German study found mortality drops in recessions due to decreases in cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, car accidents and suicides. Mr. Ruhm has found that among 23 OECD countries, deaths tend to rise when economic times are good.

For years, sex researchers, campus women’s centers and the media have viewed college as a place where young women explore their sexuality, test boundaries, and, often, have their first — in some cases, only — lesbian relationship.

That phenomenon gave rise to the term LUG (lesbian until graduation). In 2003, a New York magazine article, “Bi for Now,” suggested that women’s involvement in their college’s gay scene exposed them to a different culture, like junior year abroad in Gay World.

But according to the new study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on 13,500 responses, almost 10 percent of women ages 22 to 44 with a bachelor’s degree said they had had a same-sex experience, compared with 15 percent of those with no high school diploma. Women with a high school diploma or some college, but no degree, fell in between.

Six percent of college-educated women reported oral sex with a same-sex partner, compared with 13 percent who did not complete high school.

Anjani Chandra was the lead author of the report, based on data from 2006 through 2008.

Although 13 percent of women over all reported same-sex sexual behavior only one percent identified themselves as gay, and another 4 percent as bisexual. To get accurate answers to intimate questions, the researchers asked those surveyed to enter their responses directly into a computer.

young people were waiting longer to have sex. Almost 29 percent of the females and 27 percent of the males, age 15 to 24, had had no sexual contact, an increase from 22 percent for both sexes in the 2002 survey.

The gender gap on homosexuality remains substantial: Twice as many women as men reported same-sex behavior. Three percent of the women — and 5 percent of the least-educated women — said they were attracted equally to men and women, compared with one percent of the men.

Researchers were particularly surprised to find that nearly eight out of 10 homeless youth they surveyed actually used online social networking media.

The study appears in the February issue of the journal AIDS and Behavior.

Sean Young and co-investigator Eric Rice, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California's School of Social Work, surveyed 201 youths between the ages 13 to 24 who were recruited in June 2009 at a Los Angeles drop-in agency that assists homeless kids.

In a self-administered, hour-long computer survey, the youth participants answered questions about their use of social networking technology, demographics, their sex and drug risk-taking, their living situations, their utilization of the agency's services, and their mental health.

The researchers sought to learn whether these youth used social networking technologies and, if so, how such use might affect their sexual risk behaviors, their knowledge of HIV and AIDS, and how likely they were to seek testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

They found that 79 percent of all participants used social networking technologies every week and that most of the participants had previously been tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), whether they used social networks or not.

In addition, more than 20 percent of sexually active participants reported having found a sex partner online over the previous three months, and more than 10 percent of sexually active participants reported engaging in what is called "exchange sex" — exchanging sex for food, drugs or a place to stay. Both these behaviors have been shown to be associated with an increased risk of contracting STIs and HIV.

new, yet-to-be published research by sociologist Elizabeth Armstrong which finds “women orgasm only 35 percent as often as men in first-time sexual encounters.”
“Women’s perception that their heterosexual casual sex partners will be unlikely to give them pleasure is not unwarranted,” Conley states.

The good news for dudes is that if women are somehow assured that the guy they're hooking up with can do sex to them in the right, orgasm-giving, way, they are pretty much as slutty as men are. So, fellas, if you want to do sex to a lady you have two strategies. One: be a lady. "This lack of confidence in men as pleasure-givers was indirectly supported by another of Conley’s experiments, which focused on bisexual women. They were 'significantly more likely to accept an offer (of a one-night stand) from a woman than from a man,' she reports."

51% of women say they would give up sex to have their “dream body” for a year, according to a tally of responses collected by Fitness Magazine from 2, 400 U.S. women in their “Diet Confessions Survey”.

At least the rest of the women polled said they would prefer to be a bit overweight and have regular sex. This survey just shows the desire for some miracle cure-all, instead of, you know, going outside. Healthy bodies do not just fall from the sky. It also says a lot about the partners of 51% of the responders. It’s not taking much for these women to shut it down.

Some other exciting statistics from this survey, as outlined by the Daily Mail:

* 30% had tried celebrity diets. Like eating baby food!
* 43% avoided some meals on purpose to lose weight. Not a good idea. Eating this way will also make you gain weight because your body actually starts storing fat since it thinks your are going into starvation mode.
* 20% said they exercised for more than two hours a day, which is a little excessive
* 25% said they had taken down a Facebook photo because they didn’t like how they looked.

While these types of surveys may seem to be trivial, it’s a good look at the mindset of women in the U.S. when it comes to fitness and body image. However this was a poll conducted by a fitness magazine, so you can expect its readers to be a little more body-focused than the Average Jane.

A study released last month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior shows that those seemingly uncontrollable “ohmigods” during apparent orgasm are often play-acting meant to “manipulate” men.
The scientists, Gayle Brewer of the University of Central Lancashire and Colin Hendrie of the University of Leeds, asked 71 women between the ages of 18 and 48 a series of questions. They broke down the vocalizations into categories that included “silence,” “moan/groan,” “scream/shriek/squeal,” “words” (such as “Yes!” or the partner’s name, and “instructional commands” like “more.” Other questions asked why the women made the vocalizations and at what point they themselves had an orgasm, if they had an orgasm at all, and, if not, why they were doing all that shouting.
Well, it turned out that “women were making conscious vocalizations in order to influence their partner rather than as a direct expression of sexual arousal,” Brewer told me.
“Importantly, 92 percent of participants felt very strongly that these vocalizations boosted their partner’s self-esteem,” the paper stated, “and 87 percent reported using them for this purpose.”

In Brewer’s survey, more than 25 percent of women routinely used vocalization to fake it. They did it about 90 percent of the time they realized they would not climax. About 80 percent faked using vocalizations about half the time they were unable to have an orgasm.
Women do this because their men are so goal-directed they won’t stop until a woman climaxes, the authors say.

In a 2009 study she co-authored in the Journal of Sex Research, called “Men’s and Women’s Reports of Pretending Orgasm,” she explored the idea that men and women tend to follow scripted roles. Men are supposed to give a woman an orgasm “and her orgasm proves the quality of his work,” she said. Because women do not ejaculate, men have to rely on some other outward sign, like a woman singing “Oh Sweet Mystery of Life!” (“Young Frankenstein”) to know we’ve done our job.

In Muehlenhard’s study, 36 percent of men who did fake it at least once used “vocal acting” whereas 61 percent of women who faked it at least once used vocal acting.

The recession also appears to have staved off divorce in some instances (Fig. 5). Among married Americans who say they were considering divorce or separation prior to the recession (about 5 percent of all respondents in the survey), 38 percent say that the recession has caused them to put aside divorce or separation.

The study, which followed more than 2,500 New Yorkers for nine or more years, found that people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events, including stroke and heart attack, than those who completely eschewed the diet drinks, according to researchers who presented their results today at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference in Los Angeles.

For the new study, researchers surveyed 2,564 north Manhattan residents about their eating behaviors, exercise habits, as well as cigarette and alcohol consumption. The study volunteers were also given physical check-ups that included blood pressure measurements and blood tests for cholesterol and other factors that might affect the risk for heart attack and stroke.
The increased likelihood of vascular events remained even after Gardener and her colleagues accounted for risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Pointing the finger more squarely at diet drinks, the researchers found no increased risk among people who drank regular soda.

Myth: Women are needy and clingy in relationships.
Fact: Women need more independence in relationships than men do. In a relationship, women are more likely than men – across every age group – to want their own interest, have personal space, their own bank account, regular nights out with their girlfriends and vacations on their own.

Myth: Guys don’t want to get married and have to be pushed into having kids.
Fact: Men are just as inclined to want to get married as women. In fact, 33% of men and 33% of women said they want to get married. And among singles without children under 18, more men (24%) than women (15%) say they want to have children.

Myth: Older people don’t care about sex.
Fact: Older men and women are less likely to compromise on either love or sexual attractiveness in order to have a committed relationship. In addition, older singles find sex while in a committed relationship more satisfying than other age groups.

Myth: Single parents have no social life.
Fact: Not only do single parents go on more dates than singles without kids but more single parents are currently dating someone (21%) than those without kids (16%).

Myth: Young singles today are promiscuous.
Fact: More people in the 21-34 age group say they have never had sex. To be precise, 24% of men and 23% of women ages 21-34 are virgins.

Myth: I love you implies a serious commitment.
Fact: 31% of singles believe that “I love you” means “I want you in my life” and 30% believe it means “I care about you.” Only 14% think it means “I want to spend the rest of my life with you” and 19% that “I want to have a committed relationship with you.”

Myth: Unemployed means unlucky in love.
Fact: 50% of singles would be open to dating someone unemployed if they found the person interesting.

Myth: Hook-ups never turn into relationships.
Fact: 36% of singles are open to a casual hook-up in the near future; and 54% of singles have had a one-night stand. 35% of singles have had a one-night stand that turned into a long term partnership.

The Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative (CWPC) was created by women, for women, in 2005 to redefine the way we look at pornography. Our mission is to recover the term "pornography" from the gold-chained, hairy-chested, leisure-suit-wearing, mouth-breathing knuckleheads, and reclaim it for the rest of us. CWPC members have opted to keep their membership roster unpublished, out of concern that our colleagues in academia, medicine, and the media may still have underdeveloped senses of humor.

Among Americans who have ever lived with an unmarried partner, nearly two-thirds (64%) say they thought about it as a step toward marriage. That includes 53% of those now living with a partner, compared with 67% of those who cohabited in the past. There are no significant differences by age, race or gender on this question, among people who ever lived with a partner. Adults with annual incomes of $75,000 or more (69%) are more likely than those with annual incomes under $30,000 (59%) to say they saw cohabitation as a step toward marriage. And, as might be expected, a higher share of married former cohabiters (74%) say they viewed living together as a step toward marriage, compared with currently unmarried people who have ever cohabited (56%). Some 70% of self-described conservatives say they thought about cohabiting as a step toward marriage, compared with 59% of liberals and 66% of moderates. The least religious Americans (defined as seldom or never going to services) also are least likely to have thought of cohabiting as a step toward marriage (53%) compared with 72% of the moderately religious (attending services monthly) and 74% of the very religious (attending services at least weekly). As for the marital intentions of people who currently are cohabiting, 69% say they expect they will someday marry that person, 25% say they don't expect to and 6% don't know or would not answer. Looking at actual experience, about nine-in-ten married people who have cohabited say they lived with their current spouse before they got married -- 59% only with their current spouse and 30% with their current spouse and with someone else. Married adults with annual incomes of $75,000 or more who cohabited in the past are notably more likely to have lived only with their current spouse before they got married (67%) than are married people with annual incomes under $30,000 (43%). Lower income adults (48%) are more likely than the higher income adults (26%) to have lived both with their spouse and someone else.

A new study has found that many young U.S. couples disagree about monogamy. The research was done by Oregon State University researchers. They collected data from 434 heterosexual married and non-married couples who were in the 18 to 25 age range.

The findings of the study were somewhat surprising. In 40 percent of the young couples, one partner felt that he/she had agreed to a monogamous, but the other partner did not feel that they were exclusive. It seems like a lot of people in this age group are not communicating well about their expectations of their relationships.

Even among the couples where both parties had agreed to monogamy, at least 30 percent had broken the agreement by having sex with someone outside the relationship. Could it be that the expectation of monogamy is going away among young couples in the U.S.?

Interestingly, couples who have children are less likely to have a monogamy agreement, and the fact that a couple is married made them no more likely than an unmarried couple to have an agreement to only have sex within the relationship.

The professor arbitrarily decided that the student in question needed her own grading system specifically for her situation  -- despite the fact that he had no idea whether she was even going to miss any of the quizzes he bases the grade on in the first place.  The student in fact told the professor she would not be letting her situation get in the way of her class attendance.

Why exactly then did Dr. Feldman need to get student input on her grade?  Was he really trying to devise a fair grading system for her?  Or could it have been a way not only of discriminating against her, but ensuring also that all of the students were aware that she had just given birth?

The story explored the differences in dating and sexual behavior of women in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s based on a survey of 1400 women. When it came to the question of having sex on a first date if there was chemistry, 17% of the 20somethings said that was a possibility versus 28% of the 30- and 29% of the 40-somethings.

If the first thing you thought was “Really? I thought younger girls were throwing it around like confetti,” you and me both. With the background noise of hook-up culture, sexting, friends with benefits and the Duke Sex List it’s easy to think that younger women are pretty sexually aggressive… that is, if pop culture is your main source of information about them.

Girls in their 20s are still close enough with family and friends to consider their opinions important; dating site OKCupid found that “my girlfriends” is the most common phrase used by straight women in their profiles and “close with my mother” is in the top 20. If mom or the BFFs don’t approve of jumping into bed, she might be less likely to rush it.

An abstract from an Oregon Health and Science University study on body image published in The Journal of General Psychology found that “younger and older women have similar body dissatisfaction but that younger women have a higher drive for thinness and experience more societal influence on their body image.”

In a study conducted by clinical psychology student Karen Faisandier, more than 880 adult subjects participated in an anonymous online questionnaire about their sex-related activities, including their orientation and their thoughts about how their relationships with others were affected by their sex-related attitudes and behaviors.

"Questions included whether they engaged in online sex, prostitution, sex that made them feel degraded or put them at risk of harm, sex with multiple partners or public indecency," the university said in a Wednesday press release. "They were also asked about alcohol and drug use, relationship experiences and feelings about themselves."

As the Pentagon prepares to release its highly anticipated survey of military personnel about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, most Americans (58%) say they favor allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the armed forces. Fewer than half that number (27%) oppose allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.

These opinions have changed little in recent years. Since 2005 -- including three surveys this year -- roughly 60% have consistently favored permitting homosexuals to serve openly in the military.

There is greater support for permitting gays to serve openly today than there was in 1994, after President Clinton put in place the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. In July of that year, 52% said they favored allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military while 45% said they opposed allowing this.

Ackerman also looked at the influence of an object’s hardness. He asked 49 volunteers to touch either a hard block of word or a soft blanket, under the pretence of examining objects to be used in a magic act. Afterwards, when they read an interaction between a boss and an employee, those who felt the wood thought the employee was stricter and more rigid than those who touched the blanket (but no less positive). It doesn’t have to be the hands that do the touching either – when he repeated the same task with 86 volunteers who sat in either a hard, wooden chair or a soft, cushioned one, he found the same results. “We primed participants by the seat of their pants,” he writes.

A poll of 1,500 people who are out found that responders over the age of 60 came out, on average, at the age of 37, The Guardian reports. People currently in their 30s came out when they were 21, and those aged 18-34 came out by the time they were 17.
The survey, which was nonscientific, was conducted across social networking sites.

Last month, researchers from Indiana University's Center for Sexual Health Promotion published what is said to be the most comprehensive national study on sex in nearly 20 years. Findings appear in a special issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Sexual Medicine and include commentary from several prominent sexual-health experts. Research scientist & lecturer Debby Herbenick, lead author of the study, which surveyed 5,865 teens and adults from ages 14 to 94.
Vaginal intercourse remains the most common sex act, although respondents reported more than 40 unique combinations of behaviors during their most recent sexual experience.
anal sex: More than 40% of men and women 25 and older in the survey said they had tried it. "They're not doing it frequently, but they are trying it, and that's something we just didn't see 20 years ago."
In the 50-plus age category, 21% of women & 16% of men had sex most recently with a casual partner, while 6% and 12% respectively had sex with a friend.

Harvard University researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert conducted a study in the form of a survey that was delivered to people via an iPhone application.
The iPhone application was used by 2,250 people in total, as they were asked questions about their thoughts, and asked them to rate their happiness on a scale.

Neon Tommy is the online publication of the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism

Researchers said they were struck by the variety of ways in which the subjects engaged in sex — 41 different combinations of sexual acts were tallied, encompassing vaginal and anal intercourse, oral sex, and partnered masturbation.
85 percent of the men said their latest sexual partner had an orgasm, while only 64 percent of the women reported having an orgasm in their most recent sexual event.
The study, which began taking shape in 2007, was funded by Church & Dwight Co., the manufacturer of Trojan condoms.