Bo Lewin

Use of birth control pills and condoms among 17-19 year-old adolescents in Norway; Contraceptive versus protective behaviour?

This article addresses the relationship between sexual risk behaviour and contraceptive behaviour, and considers whether adolescents who use condoms are practising birth control or STD protective behaviour. The material comprised a representative sample of 3000 Norwegians aged 17-19 years. Data were collected by anonymous self-administered questionnaires. The response-rate was 63%. At the first sexual intercourse 51% of the adolescents used condoms and 7% birth control pills. At the most recent intercourse 31% used condoms and 38% the pill. Use of the pill was widespread among adolescents with high coital frequency and few coital partners. Use of condoms was not particularly widespread among adolescents who reported a relatively large number of coital partners. Irrespective of the number of years they had been coitally active there was no significant difference between those who intended to use condoms at the next sexual intercourse and those who did not as regards their beliefs about condoms as protection against STDs, HIV and unintended pregnancies. The results from this study indicate that the majority of adolescents who use contraception do this for protection against unintended pregnancy and not for protection against STDs. The preference for the pill may make teenagers less prepared to practise STD protective behaviour in specific situations.

Casual sex among Norwegian adolescents

The issue of casual sex and amount of sexual experience was studied using data from a representative sample of 2997 Norwegians, 17–19 years old. Data were collected by anonymous self-administered questionnaires, and the response rate was 62.8%. Results showed that among adolescents, experience of casual sex to a large extent was a function of the time the individual had been coitally active. The amount of sexual experience was poorly related to social background and strongly related to life-style factors such as smoking and drinking of alcohol. A small minority of adolescents was found to have a sexual behavior deviating from that of the majority, and thus containing elements of potentially high risk for contracting HIV or other STDs. This minority of adolescents had the identifying characteristic of low self-reported intimacy with their first coital partner.

The adolescent boy and girl: first and other early experiences with intercourse from a representative sample of Swedish school adolescents.

Attitudes and sexual experiences among adolescents have been studied using data from a representative sample of pupils in tenth grade in Uppsala, the fourth largest city in Sweden. Sex differences in coital experience, coital frequency, and evaluation of coital frequency are analyzed. The importance of traditional sex roles is discussed, and the differential sexual socialization of boys and girls is commented on. The data help convey a picture of an adolescent boy who feels deprived of heterosexual outlets and whose sexual relations with girls are sudden, unplanned, and characterized by limited emotional involvement; the adolescent boy is also quite discontent. This picture is contrasted with that of the girls, about whom it is found that, compared with the boys, a greater proportion have coital experience, the average age at first intercourse is lower, and the average number of experiences with intercourse during the last month is higher; to a greater extent than the boys, the girls are satisfied with how often they have intercourse.

Self-perceived effects of Internet pornography use, genital appearance satisfaction, and sexual self-esteem among young Scandinavian adults

This study examined the associations among the frequency of viewing Internet pornography, beliefs about how realistically pornography portrays sex, self-perceived effects of one’s pornography use, genital appearance satisfaction, and sexual self-esteem in young adults. Online data were collected from four convenience samples of university students from Norway and Sweden, members of a queer youth organization, and readers of an erotic magazine. Because of cultural similarities and the comparable magnitude and patterns of the bivariate correlations among the samples on the study variables, they were pooled into a single sample (N = 1,274). The majority of men (81.1%) and a minority of women (18.1%) reported at least weekly use of Internet pornography on their personal computers, whereas using a mobile phone or tablet was less common. Most of the participants had sought mainstream pornographic content. Those with a stronger belief in pornographic realism were more likely to perceive the effect of pornography use positively. A hypothesized relationship between self-perceived positive effects of pornography use and a higher level of sexual self-esteem was found for men but not for women. This result was partially due to higher satisfaction with genital appearance among the men who mainly watched mainstream pornography. Genital appearance satisfaction was linked to higher sexual self-esteem for women, but it was not related to the self-perceived effect of pornography use. The results indicate that pornography may expand personal sexual scripts for both men and women, and may have a positive, although modest, influence on the sexual self-esteem of young male adults.