Preface: Genetics and the human encounter with alcohol

Abstract

In this paper, we calculate a base line of statistical data on the frequency of sexual activity at various ages of Taiwanese women. A cross‐sectional study using questionnaires administered during personal interviews was conducted on more than seventeen thousand women who attended family planning clinics in the Taipei metropolitan area in 1991 and 1992. Of the women surveyed, 2.8 per cent were sexually inactive in the previous month, 83.67 per cent had intercourse one to nine times in the previous month, and 13.56 per cent had intercourse ten times or more. The mean frequency of sexual activity was 6.8 times a month. Age‐specific mean coital frequencies for the age groups of less than 25 years, of 25–34 years, and of 35–44 years were 10.3, 7.3, and 6.6 times per month, respectively. Increased sexual frequency was associated with the following factors: young age, unmarried, lower educational level, fewer years of marriage and being on the pill. When logistic regression was used to control for confounding variables, we found that a woman's age is the most significant factor in predicting her sexual frequency.