The relationships between sexual behaviour and health lifestyle

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study sociodemographic and lifestyle differences between different AIDS/HIV risk groups in the general population. Respondents reporting more than three sexual partners in the previous five years, dichotomized into condom and non-condom users, are contrasted with the remaining respondents. The data consists of 7,717 interviews collected by telephone in the metropolitan areas of London, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The data show that while age and marital status are strongly related to sexual behaviours, there is evidence of individuals engaging in risky behaviours in all age and marital status groups. The relationship between sexual behaviours and occupational status is weak; there is a considerable and consistent difference between sexually more active and sexually less active respondents with regard to healthy ‘lifestyle’ indicators, such as smoking, alcohol use, exercise and safety behaviour, but this difference is less strong with regard to condom use. The paper supports the conclusion that in concentrating resources on the young and on unmarried individuals large numbers of individuals at an elevated risk for AIDS/HIV in other population groups will be missed The strong relationships between indicators of health lifestyle and sexual behaviour seem to be a factor to be considered in the development of future AIDS/HIV-related health interventions.