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de Visser, Richard, Smith, Anthony and Richters, Juliet (2005) Can we generalise to other young people from studies of sexual risk behaviour among university students? Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 29 (5). pp. 436-441. ISSN 1326-0200
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Objective: Many studies of sexual behaviour and condom use are based on data collected from university students. The aim of this paper is to determine whether first-year university students and their same-age peers have different patterns of sexual behaviour.
Methods: Computer-assisted telephone interviews were completed by a representative sample of 19,307 Australian men and women aged 16–59 years (response rate 73.1%), 920 of whom were aged 17–19 years. Comparisons were made between reports of sexual risk behaviours from first-year university students and reports of the same behaviours from their same-age peers.
Results: For female respondents, there were few differences in the sexual behaviour of first-year university students and their same-aged peers. For male respondents, there were some significant differences in the sexual behaviour of first-year university students and their same-aged peers and also different patterns of correlation between measures of sexual behaviour. Socio-demographic characteristics were related to whether 17–19 year-old respondents were first-year university students or engaged in other activities.
Conclusions: The findings of studies of the sexual behaviour of university undergraduates should only be generalised to other groups with caution. The sociodemographic characteristics of the student population of a particular institution must be taken into account before generalisation to the broader population can safely be made from studies of single universities.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Schools and Departments: | School of Psychology > Psychology |
| Depositing User: | Richard De Visser |
| Date Deposited: | 06 Feb 2012 15:45 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Jun 2012 11:57 |
| URI: | http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/14245 |