PREMARITAL SEX

1. Introduction

Have you ever had sex? Did you get married? Do you think premarital sex is immoral? What do you think about that? Nowadays, we are exposed to many sexual things, and many people have sex before marriage. In “Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954-2003” the author says “Data from the 2002 survey indicate that by age 20, 77% of respondents had had sex, 75% had had premarital sex, and 12% had married” (Finer, n.d, p.1). There are many problems physically and emotionally. It causes many kinds of disease, and it can be considered immoral behavior with religions.


2. Purpose

Our group, Erika, Jinshu, Mamdouh and I, decided to find out how American feel about premarital sex in Carbondale. I wanted to know the relationship between gender and what people think about premarital sex. Moreover, I wanted to know how many people already had sex, and who influenced them.


3. Hypotheses

I had some hypotheses about having premarital sex in US. Usually, when we think about Americans, we think they are cool, and have an open mind because of the media. Therefore, we thought most American don’t care about premarital sex; they have free thinking about sex. And on average, we thought they have sex relatively early. Moreover, we thought there is no difference between men and women.


4. Methods and Procedures

Our group was supposed to ask twenty males and twenty females in Carbondale. And we didn’t care about that respondents are students or not. However, we only asked nineteen males and twenty females because we missed one paper. Almost all were students, probably, even though it’s not our intention. We prepared a survey that had ten questions, and it only included choice questions.


5. Data + Chart

http://eap1.blogspot.com/2008/03/practice-survey-results.html


6. Results

As a result, fifteen out of nineteen males, 76%, had sex, and twelve out of twenty females, 60%, had sex. Only six out of nineteen males, 31%, said that premarital sex is immoral. 36% of males and 40% of females said they were influenced by their friends. Ten out of nineteen males, 52%, disagree with religions that ban sex before marriage, but twelve out of twenty females, 60%, agree with them.


7. Conclusion and Discussion

I believed that people thought premarital sex didn’t matter, and it’s true. Most Americans had sex before marriage. I was surprised that females had sex earlier than males. However, females more concern about premarital sex than males even though they had sex earlier than males. I believed that there is no difference between males and females. In some part, it’s true, and in another part, it’s not true. They already have had sex before, they don’t think that it’s immoral and a number of them were influenced by their friends. There is no difference. However, males don’t care about chastity, but females do. It’s a difference.
If I can do this survey another time, I would like to ask another question about disease, because it is also important and is a problem. I think females worry more about that than males.


8. Reference

Finer, L.B. (n.d.). Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954-2003. Public Health Reports. Retrieved February 28, 2008, from http://www.publichealthreports.org/userfiles/122_1/12_PHR122-1_73-78.pdf


9. Appendix

Copy of Survey

http://eap1.blogspot.com/2008/03/having-premarital-sex_03.html