The latest report in the Durex Network’s Face of Global Sex series has just been released, and it uncovers some very interesting things about the sexual attitudes and behaviour of young people in Europe.

They won’t know unless we tell them is the fifth report from the Durex Network, which was launched in 2005 to develop and support initiatives promoting responsible sex and reproductive health.

The study examines the sexual health knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of young people in 15 countries across Europe, and provides a strong indication of the potential way forward for SRE programmes in the future by highlighting a number of significant issues.

By raising these topics we hope that that the report proves useful in helping to inform educationalists and policy makers in the creation of sex and relationships education initiatives in the future.

We conducted the research as an online survey of 15 to 20 year-olds and included nine Western European countries – Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands and the UK – and six in Eastern Europe – Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Turkey.

The questions explored differences in levels of KAP and whether these can be explained by such factors as age, gender, age at first sex education, country or region of residence, source of sex education or relationship status.

More than 15,000 responses were received, and the results paint an interesting picture of young Europeans’ views of sex. Perhaps the most significant statistic was the high degree of ignorance of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) across the continent.

In Eastern Europe, for example, 36 per cent of people wrongly believed they could catch an STI from a toilet seat, while in Western Europe almost a quarter (24 per cent) thought this was the case.

Overall, 28 per cent of Europeans believed they could catch STIs that way, with Turkey (44 per cent) having the highest figure and France (18 per cent) the lowest. The results were equally worrying when it came to young people’s perceived chances of them catching STIs.

German respondents showed the greatest awareness, but even here as many as 45 per cent felt they were at little or no risk, with the proportion rising to 84 per cent in Spain and 86 per cent in Poland. The report also revealed that Western European countries had higher KAP scores than Eastern European countries, while there were low KAP scores among young males in all the countries surveyed compared to young females.

The results are being released across Europe to help inform those dealing with sex education policies, and I’ll update this blog about how the report is received in different countries.

They won’t know unless we tell them is available to download from the Durex Network website (www.durexnetwork.org).