Behind the headlines surrounding a new survey lies even more important lessons about the virtues of collecting intimate sex details and studying them.
When it comes to national stereotypes about relationships, the British don’t fare too well. Think Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Or for that matter, Hugh Grant in any film. We’re said to have so many hang-ups that we don’t even talk about sex until we’re in the pub, and to need to be blind drunk before anything approaching physical contact occurs.
It suggests that Brits are gradually becoming more comfortable openly discussing sex, more experimental and more tolerant towards others.
Even though the 15,000 people interviewed for Natsal-3 were English, Scottish and Welsh, the
findings hold insights for others around the world. Similar numbers were surveyed in 1990-1991 and 1999-2001, allowing changes to be tracked over two decades and making it the largest study of its kind ever to have been carried out.
While these facts are interesting and will no doubt be widely discussed, 20 researchers and 491 survey interviewers did not spend several years and over $10 million of grant money just to satisfy our curiosity about who is doing what to whom, and how often. The main original motivation for the first Natsal study was for a much more profound reason.
Month gave millions of dollars to do research and came to the conclusion that people do not talk about it and in 1980 it was AIDS.
But now people talk about having relationships with people one night and desconexies not know if you have any enfermatat day later and you do not remember.
This research however does not seem to be very important for young people today.
