Study: Adults Can't Agree What 'Sex' Means

March 8, 2010— -- Paging Dr. Ruth: Adults don't even agree on what it means to "have sex."

Researchers at the renowned Kinsey Institute at Indiana University asked 484 people "Would you say you had sex with someone if …"

People between the ages of 18 and 96 took part in the study, and their results showed no single generation or gender agrees on a definition of "had sex" -- be it oral, anal or digital.

But doctors, sociologists and therapists all agree that the varying definition of "sex" can be a big problem in some cases.

"Having sex is a euphemism. It is not a very exact term," said Eli Coleman, of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. "That's why it's very important that physicians and health care workers ask more specific and precise questions rather than using euphemisms."

Nearly 95 percent of people in the study agreed that penile-vaginal intercourse meant "had sex." But the numbers changed as the questions got more specific.

For example, 11 percent of respondents would not use the phrase "had sex" if "the man did not come." About 80 percent of respondents said penile-anal intercourse meant "had sex."

About 70 percent of people believed oral sex was sex.

"The only things we see consistently are the inconsistencies," said Brandon J. Hill, Kinsey Institute researcher and corresponding author on the recent study published in the journal Sexual Health.

Researchers at the Kinsey Institute first examined the question of what "had sex" meant to people in 1991, among college students at Indiana University. They asked nearly 600 students about various scenarios of sexual behavior, and 59 percent of respondents said that oral sex did not constitute having "had sex" with a partner.

Stephanie A. Sanders, who is also an author of the current study, and June M. Reinisch, director emeritus of the Kinsey Institute, published the student survey research eight years later -- shortly after the 1999 scandal between former President Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.