High school sexual networks

[pozorvlak]

Interesting article from LiveScience.com, about some researchers who investigated networks of sex and relationships at US high schools, and discovered that they're fascinatingly different from adult networks

Comments

[mi_guida]

I see two male homosexual relationships, actually, both in the same are of the chart. Still probably not as much as you'd think, though.

[liminereid]

May also be a symptom both of repression and not really accepting what you are doing as a homosexual rleationship. I mean how many people actually admitted to homosexual relationships at secondary school in proportion to how many people have subsequently come out/admitted to experiences or relationships? it may just be a case of people going "oh god I'm not gay/ bi /whatever so I won't admit to that relationship/experience"

[pozorvlak]

That sounds quite likely. Also, I suppose for a lot of homosexual sex acts, it's a lot easier to say "oh, it doesn't really count as sex, we didn't Go All The Way (TM)". I'm told that a big problem among US teenagers is that they don't think of oral sex as being Real Sex, and so don't realise that it can transmit STDs.

[fi_h]

There are also only about 500 dots on the paper (just more than half of 832), the questionaire was only asking about sexual relationships, there is no reason why at school there could have been relationships where the people didnt have sex and hence weren't on the paper. It is also only within the school so there is nothing ruling out them having gay relationships with people outside school.

As a side note, I dont know anyone in my year of 150 or so at school who has come out as being a lesbian (all girls school) either at the time, or since we have all left school. I dont know if i just haven't heard about it or what but i dont think my school was particularly homophobic. So are you really sure its supposed to be 10% gay/bi/whatever?

[pozorvlak]

The article seems to say that they were asking about dating rather than just sex, and the caption says "romantic relations" rather than "sexual relations". I'm going to have to count the sodding dots now, aren't I?

238 + 2*10 + 2*8 + 6 + 2*7 + 4*5 + 5*4 + 12*3 + 9*3 + 63*2 = 523, so it looks like you're right, and the graph only shows the ones who were sexually active with other students.

10% GBW is the standard pull-a-number-out-of-a-hat that I use for this question - finding an actual answer is surprisingly difficult and subtle. But if we simplify to people who've had sexual experiences with members of the same sex, 10% is probably on the low side - Kinsey reports nearer 40%, for instance, and several other surveys report about 20% (though admittedly, other surveys have reported less than 10% on that question). Here, we have 6 people out of over 500 - that's low.

[fi_h]

Yes I agree 6 out of 500 is low, but the number of people who have ever had sexual experiences with a member of the same sex is going to be substantially higher than in the last year or however long the article was asking about. I'm sure that there are people who have sexual experiences with members of the same sex once or twice and decide its not for them

[pozorvlak]

18 months, and you make a good point, but dammit, they're high school students. 18 months is probably their entire sexual history, at a time when I for one found it difficult to think about anything else. I dunno, frankly I find it hard to believe that the numbers aren't higher for adolescents than for adults - the sexual experiences which caused them to decide it's not for them would have been less than 18 months ago in many cases.

THis piece of work is utter crap

[benparker]

Actually, I haven't read the article, just the summary you linked to. I might dig it out as I'm interested in social networks without it forming a major part of my PhD at the moment

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[totherme]

The small world phenomena that these guys are trying to find only exists in networks in some sort of equilibrium, not in growing networks- why would you expect to find it?

Perhaps they don't expect to find it, but have observed a lot of ineffective STD health drives targeted at the hubs which they don't expect to find. If I was in that position, I'd be sorely tempted to try to disprove the (baseless, but rampant) assumption with a study like this.

It could be that the survey states the obvious from the point of view of a researcher, but is a useful political tool in the hands of a forward thinking educator.

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[benparker]

I agree, there may be a use to it, I'd like to see the actual science.

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[pozorvlak]

I hadn't thought of that - thanks! But I think there's often value in proving the "obvious", particularly if (as totherme points out) the political consensus is wrong.

Christianity v AIDS - yeah, I'd be rather surprised if AIDS gets adopted as a state religion anywhere... I'm reading about the spread of early Christianity at the moment, and the huge push it got from Constantine's conversion. Interesting stuff.