Monday 5 January, 2009Sex survey shows teens lie on sex surveys

When Janet Rosenbaum, a doctoral student at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, analyzed surveys about adolescent abstinence pledges and sexual history, she "found that over half of the people who took the virginity pledges said the following year they never took one, and those who [had] said they had sex said they never had sex."

The surveys, conducted by the National Institue of Child Health and Human Development, asked teens nationwide whether they had signed a virginity pledge, then asked the same question a year later.

According to Rosenmbaum's research, grownups are as unreliable as kids. Adult subjects, who were asked which candidates they would vote for in an election, later denied the statements they had made. "People will report they want to give the right impression about themselves. They will say it’s true even if it’s not strictly true."

Rosenbaum's findings appear in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health.