>That survey can't be right. Not even the Catholic Church could enforce
>that kind of behavior.
hell, my grandmother has had 5 sex partners that I know about. she's 72. i don't think she's especially frisky, though she does like to be coupled with a man. indeed, she is on her third marriage to a man 14 years her junior. she met him at the senior community she lives in and it makes all the rest of the people there gossip like mad! Go Grandma!
for context, the survey was conducted in 1987, right on the heels of the AIDS scare.
people provide "socially acceptable responses" -- the answers that they think the survey takers will want to hear. though i would hope that a sex researcher would recognize that and he'd try to account for it. they didn't answer survey questions by filling out a form. rather, they were interviewed for an hour and a half, on average. seems to me that would be disconcerting for many folks.
they surveyed 18 - 59 year olds, which means that the median across the board is lumping together people born in 1930 and people born in 1966.
median (the most frequent response) for women was 2, for men it was 6. the disparity is typical of sex research and usually interpreted as a sign of exaggeration on both sides.
i also suspect that people interpreted "partner" as people they'd count as "real" sex partners. When someone just asks me something like that, I think of the ones that i had some sort of partnership with! I don't think of the short flings that burned out quickly, let alone one night stands.
I think you have to come to the south and experience southern prudery to get a flavor of just how two-faced are attitudes toward public discussion of sex. Or watch Primary Colors and The Apostle back to back. :)
kelley