Sex Math aka Cosmo Drives Me Crazy!

[blondestwolf]

OK, I've seen various versions of this stated as "fact", most recently in Cosmo... Here's the direct quote form the July 2010 issue, page 106:

The average number of sexual partners for heterosexual men is 7; for heterosexual women, it's 4.

I am totally willing to believe that men claim more sex partners than women, but there is just no way in my mind

Comments

[rusalka]

I do not disagree. I rather want to see the study (or studies) that these numbers came from, just so I could pick them apart.

[blondestwolf]

Of course, Cosmo never cites their sources! But Galen mentioned another article that cited it as coming from a CDC study... They do studies on this stuff, here's the 2005 report.

Tables 9 and 10, about halfway through, seem to have the relevant data.

To me, after looking the study, the number of sex partners still seems to not "add up", but the data they give isn't very refined and has a lot of room for interpretation. At this point, I still believe that misrepresentation of number of sexual partners is the cause of the disparity, perhaps aided by differences in definition of "sexual partner".