Discrepancies in Natsal

摘要

One result to emerge from the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) is that the mean lifetime number of opposite-sex sexual partners differs significantly between men and women. For instance, for the entire age range (16-74 years) examined by Catherine Mercer and colleagues (Nov 30, p 1781)1 in the most recent survey, the averages were found to be 14-1 for men and 7-1 for women. However, these averages should always be identical for the general populationgiven the following reasonable assumptions: firstly, that the population consists of equal numbers of men and women; and secondly, that for each member of the population, all of their sexual partners also reside within the population.