Updates on the case:

Reporting of sexual partners by men and women

Subject:Results of a new representative survey of sexual behavior
Keywords:number of sexual partners, median
Date: Friday, 20 January, 1995
From: Samprit Chatterjee (schatterjee@stern.nyu.edu),
Mark S. Handcock (mhandcock@stern.nyu.edu),
Jeffrey S. Simonoff (jsimonoff@stern.nyu.edu)
Organization: Department of Statistics and Operations Research, New York University
In October, 1994 the results of a new study on the sexual behavior of the general population in the U.S.A. were published (``The Social Organization of Sexuality; Sexual practices in the United States'' by Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael and Stuart Michaels).

The survey was based on personal interviews with a probability sample of 3,432 women and men between the ages of 18 and 59 years. The survey asked questions on sexual practices, experiences related to sexuality, and the number of, and preferences for, sexual partners.

The study give similar results to the GSS data reported in the case. As in the GSS data, the distributions of the numbers of sexual partners is very right-skewed. They find that the median number of sexual partners is 6 for men and 2 for women.

The authors list seven possible causes for this discrepancy (p. 185) and suggest that the largest proportion of the discrepancy is due to men exaggerating, women understating or both. However they do not attempt to explain the observed discrepancy, nor analyse the results in the same way as in the case.

There is a second book for the popular market entitled "Sex in America: A Definitive Survey" by Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, and Gina Kolata. It contains a lot less of the interesting data and relevant technical information than the first book.