Sexual experiences and their correlates among college students in Mumbai City, India

International Family Planning Perspectives, Sep 1999 by Abraham, Leena, Kumar, K Anil

The importance of knowledge about issues related to sex extends beyond its importance in terms of influencing sexual experience. In particular, one might expect that knowledge would lead to the practice of safer sex; results of an examination of this behavior, however (not shown), did not support this hypothesis. Among the 160 young men who had ever had intercourse, 13% had a low level of knowledge, 72% a moderate level and 15% a high level. Yet, of the 148 of these students who answered a question on condom use, 43% reported never having used the method, and 45% said they had used it only sometimes. Thus, even though most young men had at least a moderate level of knowledge, the vast majority engaged in unprotected intercourse. Further calculations revealed that 18% of young men with a high level of knowledge always used condoms, compared with 11% of those with a moderate level and 5% of those with a low level of knowledge.

The age at which knowledge is gained may determine the extent of its influence on sexual experience or the practice of safer sex. Overall, 55% of the young men who had ever had intercourse said that they were younger than 18 the first time they had done so; this group includes 71 students in the 11th standard and 17 in their final year of college. These young men might have had inadequate knowledge at the time they initiated intercourse, but presumably at least the older ones among them have improved their knowledge since then.

Multivariate Findings

The logistic regression analyses included 12 of the 21 variables examined at the bivariate level (Table 4). We excluded the family-level socioeconomic variables, which had no significant associations with sexual behavior. And of the two variables addressing religiosity, we retained only the family-level one, on the assumption that the degree of religiosity in the family influences family environment and restrictiveness.

In the analysis of factors affecting the odds of any sexual behavior, male students aged 18 or older were more than twice as likely as their younger counterparts to be sexually experienced (odds ratio, 2.4); for female students, the odds ratio was similar, but the result reached only a marginal level of statistical significance (p

The intermediate variables had the greatest effects on sexual behavior, but the results differed for male and female students. Among young men, those with liberal attitudes toward premarital sex were nearly three times as likely as their more traditionally minded peers to be sexually experienced (odds ratio, 2.7), and those with a high level of social interaction were almost four times as likely (3.9). Male students with a moderate level of exposure to erotic materials were three times as likely as those with less exposure to have sexual experience (3.3), and the odds were dramatically higher among those with a high level of exposure (14.6). Among female students, moderate or liberal attitudes toward sex in general decreased the odds of sexual experience, and exposure to erotic materials raised the odds.