SEX RESEARCH UPDATE.

Although all cultures seek to regulate some aspects of sexual behaviour, particularly out of wedlock, they appear to vary in their moral attitudes toward premarital sex, extramarital sex, arid homosexuality. It has been difficult to draw definitive conclusions about cultural differences on these issues because there has been little cross-cultural or cross-national research using identical questionnaire items and available studies have often not used nationally representative samples. The authors report on newly available survey findings on extramarital sex, homosexual sex, premarital sex, and teen sex from 24 countries. The nationally representative data were collected in 1994 as part of the International Social Survey Program. The total sample consisted of 33,590 people. Survey respondents were asked four questions about sexual morality: "Do you think it is wrong or not wrong for a man and woman to have sexual relations before marriage?"; "What if they are in their early teens, say under 16 years old?"; `What about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than his or her husband or wife?"; "What about sexual relations between two adults of the same sex?" For each item, respondents were asked to choose either "always wrong", "almost always wrong", "wrong only sometimes", or "not wrong at all."