Preliminary results on sexual risk-taking in a general population sample.

This preliminary analysis has shown that there is a considerable amount of sexual risk taking among what is largely a heterosexual population. Although it is not likely that people will faithfully use condoms with regular or main partners, only a few people use them with new or occasional partners. The fact that 20 percent of the adult population took some sexual risks in the last 12 months is quite significant from a public health perspective. This is likely a lower bound estimate since adolescents were not included and it is likely that respondents would fail to report liasons rather than inventing ones that did not happen. The association of alcohol and risk-taking is only looked at in a very global sense here. Future analyses will look closely at the entire sexual encounter event and when and under what circumstances alcohol is important. Also in future analyses we will be looking closely at the cultural belief systems which generate this alcohol and risk-taking association to see if there are mechanisms for prevention strategies.