Reproductive System & Sexual Disorders: Current Research
Open Access

Prevalence, Predictors, and Result of Sexual Practices in Adolescent and Young Adulthood

^*Correspondence: Venny Fiery, Department of Physiology, Afe Babalola University, Ekiti, Nigeria, Email:

Author info »

About the Study

Sexual practices are developmental in the sense that their prevalence, predictors, and results vary with age. Sexual conduct is considered as a normal aspect of healthy relationships in maturity; but, in adolescence, sexual behaviour is frequently viewed as a risk with an emphasis on negative outcomes. Because adolescent sexual behaviour is perceived as undesirable owing to immaturity rather than intrinsic danger, it is critical to investigate sexual behaviour from a normative developmental viewpoint. This method requires the utilization of long-term longitudinal data. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) is ideal for studying sexual development from adolescent to adulthood. Add Health is a nationally representative U.S. survey of students in the seventh and twelfth grades.

It contains survey data from five waves (WI: ages 12-20, 1994-1995; WII: ages 12-20, 1995-1996; WIII: ages 18-26, 2001-2002; WIV: ages 24-32, 2007-2008; and WV: ages 33-43, 2016-2018), it comprises sexual conduct and attitude indicators such as perceived rewards and parental disapproval. In this post, I present Add Health papers that exhibit research on sexual behaviour determinants and how they are connected with health outcomes in adolescent and young adulthood. The articles mentioned here are concerned with the frequency of various sexual behaviours, their predictors, and their health consequences. Add Health measures a variety of sexual behaviours, which are then employed in the study discussed below. To begin, many studies examine the frequency of vaginal intercourse in the preceding year or lifetime. Second, research frequently focuses on sexual activities that are associated with an increased risk of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), unwanted pregnancy, or negative mental health outcomes, such as sex with multiple past-year partners, sex with a nonrelationship partner. Third, while not measured for all adolescent wave participants, Add Health does have some data on nonintercourse sexual behaviours, such as retrospective reports of the occurrence and timing of oral and anal sex and the occurrence of previous sexual and romantic relationships within relationships. Finally, Add Health covers behavioural preventative strategies like as condoms and hormonal contraception. The preceding study focuses on all of these sorts of sexual activities; however, because it is not a thorough review, I do not examine whether each of these types of sexual behaviours has been the focus of a specific area of study, but instead provide illustrative examples of broader concepts as described above. Add Health was one of several nationwide studies of teenage sexual behaviour conducted in the 1990s; estimates of sexual activity varied among studies, with Add Health having an intermediate prevalence when compared to the others. These variations might be attributed to research design; Add Health employed an at-home computer-assisted survey for questions concerning sexual behaviour, which may have provided teenagers with a stronger sense of privacy than other studies that used interviews or classroom surveys. Data on married, cohabiting, dating, and sexual partners, sexual frequency, sexual pleasure, and concurrent partnerships are provided in contractual and public use versions of Add Health WV.

Analyses that take use of repeated measurements throughout time may yield fresh insights. For example, I used the timevarying effect model to look at how correlates of sexual behaviours change over adolescence and young adulthood, and discovered those connections between drug use and many sexual partners were greater earlier in adolescence. Because of the continuous coverage across a wide age range, Add Health data are ideally suited for this sort of research (12-42 years). Such findings might help influence public health initiatives to target particular risk factors at various ages. Building on this foundation of multiwave analysis, new insights into the developmental basis of sexual behaviour and health will be possible.