Ungdomar och sexualitet - Statens folkhälsoinstitut

14 ungdomar och sexualitet – en forskningsöversikt 2005
Summary
The aim of this review has been to provide some insight into the research area of adolescent
sexuality in the 21st century.
The first part of the report aims not only to provide additional perspectives on adolescent
sexuality as an area of research and relate it to historical and cultural development, but also
to put it into a current societal context.
The second part of the report consists of a review of almost 90 different studies as well
as a number of other publications, the majority of which are Swedish and published
between 2000 and 2005. The results of these are also compared to early research findings
and to the previous review published by the Swedish National Institute of Public Health in
2000 (Forsberg, 2000).
The structure of this summary can be said to be exactly the opposite. It starts with a
focused review of the findings of the studies examined and then reflects on how these relate
to overall development tendencies.
What does the research show?
The review begins with some more general aspects of love and sexuality and we can by
way of introduction ascertain that basically all adolescents attending upper secondary
school have fallen in love at one time or another. About three-quarters of them have also
had a relationship with someone else. There are however differences between the sexes in
this respect and slightly more girls than boys say they have or have had a relationship.
A large number of studies examine the proportion of adolescents who have sex for the
first time at a certain age. A rough summary shows that about one third of adolescents have
had sex by the time they leave compulsory school (aged 15–16) and about two-third have
done so by the time they reach the third year of upper secondary school (aged 19). These
figures have been relatively stable since the 1960s, apart from a slight shift upwards in age
during the 1980s. Most studies also show that girls have sex for the first time slightly earlier
than boys, but this difference is small (on average only a month or two) and also been
apparent since the 1960s.
These average figures should however be broken down based on different background
variables, in order to provide a more comprehensive picture. Such a breakdown indicates
that class background and Swedish/foreign background on the group level are significant
factors as regards when adolescents have sex for the first time. Adolescents attending
practically oriented upper secondary school programmes generally have sex for the first
time at a slightly younger age than those who attend more theoretically oriented programmes.
Girls with a foreign background have sex for the first time much later than girls
with a Swedish background, whereas boys with a foreign background tend to start having