Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 19, 1993 TAG: 9310190160
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
About 15 percent of married or previously married Americans have cheated on a spouse, estimated Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center.
Perhaps 3 percent to 4 percent of husbands and wives have a sexual partner outside their marriage in a given year, said Smith, director of the center's General Social Survey.
"There are probably more scientifically worthless `facts' on extramarital relations than on any other facet of human behavior," Smith said Monday in a report at an American Enterprise Institute seminar.
Smith said TV talk shows and popular magazines often report much higher numbers of marital cheaters. For example, author Shere Hite wrote that, according to responses to her questionnaire, 75 percent of women married more than five years were having affairs.
"The problem has been the lack of good, scientific information," Smith said. "There's been a vacuum. And when you have a vacuum, something fills it up. It may be Phil Donahue; it may be Shere Hite."
Other studies have found affairs to be more common than the General Social Survey did, but still well below estimates often repeated in the popular media.
For example, the Kinsey Institute of Sex Research at Indiana University estimated in 1990 that 37 percent of married men and 29 percent of married women have been unfaithful.
In a 1993 survey of people who were married or previously married, 21 percent of men and 13 percent of women reported having an affair, Smith said. Studies since 1988 suggest that extramarital affairs are more common among people born since 1940.
Smith also said infidelity is more common among residents of large central cities, among those who attend church less often, among those who have been divorced, among people unhappy with their marriage and among blacks compared to whites. The surveys found little difference by socioeconomic status.
Other findings:
2.2 percent of males have had homosexual sex in the past 12 months, and 3.1 percent report having sex with a man in the past five years.
People age 18-29 report having sex an average of 81 times per year. The frequency drops steadily from 65 times per year for those in their 40s to nine times per year for age 70 and over.
About 14 percent of men and 22 percent of women report having no sex within the past 12 months.
by CNB