Adolescents' Honesty in a Survey of Sexual Behavior

Abstract

Adolescents' reports of whether they told the truth about having had intercourse when answering a two years prior survey of sexual behavior are used to examine the correlates of such behavior. Seven percent of the young people say they did not tell the truth at Time 1. Another substan tial proportion seem to be unclear about what they said, and, perhaps, about the timing of their first intercourse. Implications of these findings for survey researchers are discussed.