Antonio Banderas and Oliver Martinez had better watch out, according to Durex’s 2003 International Sex Survey. The popular myth that Latin lovers and frisky Frenchmen are the best lays in town has officially been proven false, according to the popular condom company. Hungarians topped the list of most sexual nationalities, with the average Hungarian racking up a grand total of 152 sexual encounters per year.
The Global Sex Survey is the largest research project ever undertaken by Durex, according to the company’s website. Now in its seventh year, the project has doubled in size since it was first launched and is traditionally carried out via the Durex.com website.
More than 150,000 sexually and non-sexually active adults took part in the youth-focused survey and answers were than analyzed according to sex and age of the respondents in order to give a detailed picture of behavioral differences.
Eastern Europeans led the world in average sexual encounters, with second place going to Russia, where the average citizen has sex 150 times a year, followed by France with 144 times per year.
Americans came in relatively low on the scale, ranking seventh in the world, compared to its No. 1 spot just two years ago. Last year’s winner, France, fell only one spot, which could be a result of their annual average raising only four points, from 140 to 144.
“European countries are traditionally more open about sex in all forms,” according to the campus organization Sex Out Loud’s Outreach Coordinator Melissa Lo. “As for the survey, it really depends on what people define as sex. I mean, is it anal sex? Oral sex? Mind sex?”
Lo, a junior at the UW, said the results of surveys, whether they are conducted internationally or within the United States, cannot fully be analyzed unless readers are given an exact definition of how sex is defined. According to John DeLamater, a professor of sociology at the UW, people must clearly understand the survey’s concept of sex before they ever respond to questions concerning sexual habits.
“There’s a real ambiguity about what kind of sex the survey is talking about,” DeLamater said. “It’s hard to tell anything conclusive unless we know exactly what kinds of sex they are talking about.”
DeLamater also noted that since the survey was conducted online, the responses are really limited to those who have access to computers and the Internet, which would typically be the urban, well-educated upper class. This leaves a lot of room for inaccuracy, because huge portions of the world’s population, especially the vast majority of low-income, poverty-level citizens were not able to participate.
“People had to log onto the Internet to even access this survey,” DeLamater said. “And for the United States, that leaves primarily white, upper-class citizens, whom I would expect to be having more sex in the first place.”
DeLamater looks toward the highly publicized National Health and Social Life Survey of 1994 for more accurate results.
“In that particular study, the 3,300 participants were interviewed face-to-face, which allows a greater chance of realistic results,” DeLamater said. “According to the NHSLS survey, people in monogamous relationships were shown to have an average of 2.5 sexual encounters per week, which actually does compare to the annual results of the Durex survey.”
The entire results of the survey will not be released until World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 of this year, in an attempt to raise public awareness of this international event.
