More on virginity pledges. The American Journal of Public Health twice questioned a group of 13,000 high school students, a year apart. In the first survey about 13 per cent said they had taken a pledge that they would remain virgins until married, but in the second survey more than half of that group said they had never taken such a pledge. Also, about one third of the students claimed in the first survey to have had sex, but about 10 per cent of these denied it a year later. (Chee Chee Leung ‘Becoming virgins again’, Melbourne Age Education Supplement, 15 May 2006)

Those who conducted the study observed that ’survey respondents typically reconcile their memories with their present beliefs’, suggesting that ‘we can’t always believe what teenagers tell surveys about their sexual activity’.

I’d go a lot further than that. We can’t always believe what anyone tells surveys about their sexual activity. I don’t care how ‘confidential’ they make the survey: there are some things I’m not telling anyone! How about you?

Filed in: Sexuality