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Sexual behaviours and sexual health among middle-aged and older adults in Britain
  1. Junead Khan1,
  2. Emily Greaves1,
  3. Clare Tanton2,
  4. Hannah Kuper3,
  5. Thomas Shakespeare3,
  6. Eneyi Kpokiri1,
  7. Yun Wang4,
  8. Jason J Ong1,5,
  9. Suzanne Day6,
  10. Stephen W Pan7,
  11. Weiming Tang8,
  12. Bingyi Wang9,
  13. Xin Peng9,
  14. Bowen Liang9,
  15. Huachun Zou9,10,
  16. Joseph D Tucker11,
  17. Dan Wu1,12
  1. 1 Department of Clinical Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  2. 2 Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  3. 3 Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  4. 4 Department of Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy, School of Pharmacy, Chapman University, Orange, California, USA
  5. 5 Central Clinical School, Monash University, Carlton, Victoria, Australia
  6. 6 Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
  7. 7 Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
  8. 8 UNC Project-China, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China
  9. 9 School of Public Health (Shenzhen), Sun Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
  10. 10 Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  11. 11 Department of Clinical Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London, UK
  12. 12 Department of Epidemiology, West China School of Public Health, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
  1. Correspondence to Dr Dan Wu, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China; dan.wu{at}lshtm.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives Population-representative studies of the sexual health of middle-aged and older adults are lacking in ageing societies. This study aimed to identify latent patterns of sexual behaviours and health of people aged 45–74 years.

Methods We conducted a latent class analysis of the National Attitudes and Sexual Lifestyles Survey (Natsal-3), a nationally representative survey conducted in Britain in 2011.

Results Of the 5260 respondents aged 45–74 years, 48.86% of men and 44.91% of women belonged to the Content Caseys class who reported good sexual health. The Infrequent Indigos (30.94% of men, 44.38% of women) were characterised by a lack of sexual activity, reported some dissatisfaction, and were more likely to have a disability. The Low-Functioning Lees (11.65% of men, 8.41% of women) reported some more disability and had issues with sexual functioning and higher levels of distress. The Multiple-Partnered Morgans (8.62% of men, 2.30% of women) were characterised by a greater number of sexual partners and several risk behaviours.

Conclusions The use of these four classes can aid in improved targeting of tailored sexual health services to improve sexual function, sexual satisfaction, reduce distress and risky behaviours among middle-aged and older adults. These services should be inclusive of the disabled community.

  • Sexual Behavior
  • SEXUAL HEALTH
  • Sexual Dysfunction, Physiological

Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open access repository.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2021-055346

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    Data availability statement

    Data are available in a public, open access repository.

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    Footnotes

    • HZ, JDT and DW are joint senior authors.

    • Handling editor Nicola Low

    • JK and EG contributed equally.

    • Contributors DW, JDT, HZ, CT, TS, HK, JJO and SWP contributed to conceiving the idea. JK and EG co-led the data analysis, interpretation of results and drafted manuscript preparation under the supervision of DW. DW is the guarantor.

    • Funding This work was jointly supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) (grant number: ES/T014547/1), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72061137001), the Natural Science Foundation of China Excellent Young Scientists Fund (82022064), the Natural Science Foundation of China Young Scientist Fund (81703278) and the Special Support Plan for High-Level Talents of Guangdong Province (2019TQ05Y230).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.