The Amount of Sex Information Learning Obtained During Early Adolescence

Abstract

This study reports the findings of a survey on sources of sex information among 1152 students. They were asked to identify their initial sources of information on twelve sexual concepts. In addition, they indicated the age when they first learned these concepts and wrote a definition for each of the twelve terms. Results indicate that 99 percent of initial sex infor-mation is learned in the early adolescent years or earlier. Females tended to learn from more reliable sources than males although both learned more from peers than any other source. The overall accuracy in under-standing sexual concepts was high which is interpreted within this study as a positive indicator of early adolescents learning about sex.