Are these the people we are leaving our sex research too?

Just as it was intended to do, the BBC headline "Third 'have sex below legal age'" caught my eye this morning. The story was reporting on a study that found, among other things:

• 43% of young people had had at least five sexual partners
• The most common reason for not using condoms with a new partner was that the woman was taking the birth control pill
• 41% of respondents said pregnancy was their greatest sex fear, with 24% saying HIV and 22% sexually transmitted infections

And who brings us this fresh new survey (whose methodology is not discussed in the article)? It was a joint effort between BBC 1Xtra, Durex, and MTV. Unfortunately, having had first hand experience with two of these three companies, I have about as much confidence in this survey as I do in Valentine's Day surveys put out by sex toy stores.

It's frustrating because the fact is that the reliability and validity of a survey like this, which is obviously being used for a complicated web of marketing, publicity, and content, isn't known, and the reality is that these results could very well reflect the real experience of the teens surveyed. And it's not like academic researchers are without bias, and don't have a tremendous influence on the data they collect. They do. But somehow knowing that the value of their shares don't rise and fall based on their manipulation of the general public makes me trust them just a little bit more. Another problem with surveys like this are that there are so many of them, and they aren't always catalogued in a way that makes them easily accessible. It would be interesting to take a look at these kinds of consumer surveys over a period of years and see if a coherent picture emerges from the data.

Read more - BBC News: Third 'have sex below legal age'

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