Last week we were confronted with the revelation that a shockingly high percentage of our educational elite are less than intelligent where safe sex is concerned. According to a headline in The Independent "A quarter of students will catch an STI in their first year":
University is certainly a time for fun and frolics – but new research suggests that some students may be taking their partying a touch too hard, and endangering their health in the process.
In fact, 23 per cent will catch an STI before they finish their first year of university, half of whom (54 per cent) aren't even able to remember who gave it them, according to a survey conducted by shagatuni.com.
The headline in the Daily Mail was even more damning: "A QUARTER of students catch an STI during their first year at university – and half are too drunk to remember who gave it to them":
It is known as a time to let your hair down while at a safe distance from your parents.
But new research suggests many students are risking their health through irresponsible sexual habits.
Some 23 per cent of students admit to having caught a sexually transmitted infection during their first year alone, according to a new survey.
On the surface, these stories appear to be responsible reporting. If it is true that vast swathes of university students are endangering their health by practicing unsafe sex, the media should be commended for taking steps to highlight the problem.
However, the source of a story can entirely undermine its message - especially when the content of the news article or press release is little more than a delivery mechanism for the brand name of the company that originated the story. In the case of this report, as the Mail admits, that company is a no-strings-attached hook-up site aimed at university students:
The poll, rather ironically conducted by the website www.shagatuni.com, also revealed that 21 per cent caught an STI after their first year but before they finished their studies.
For those unfamiliar with shagatuni.com, I'll let them explain in their own words:
We're the naughtier and sexier sister site of DateatUni.com
Our sole purpose is to help students meet up for sex. This isn't an ordinary student dating site. We offer a space for students to get laid any night of the week and not have any of the strings attached with dating. So if you want to find sexy students at your university who just want a shag, JOIN UP! We're sure you'll have fun!
It may seem counterintuitive that a site aiming to advertise itself to students would publish a press release about the prevalence of STIs, but the real purpose becomes clear later in the Mail story – to advertise the promiscuity of its members: "The research also revealed that theatre studies students appeared to be the most promiscuous, with an average of 28 sexual partners while at university."
It's a message that ties in neatly with the company's own sales pitch on its website:
Whether you're a shy student who feels more comfortable making introductions online or a university player who needs to guarantee they're getting action each night of the week - our site accommodates every type of student. We even get female students sign up who are already in a relationship. We don't judge! When you're away from home and away from your partner for that length of time, we understand you have sexual needs to be fulfilled.
The statistics in the Mail and Independent article may be accurate - but it is cause for concern that they were obtained via a self-reported poll on a site dedicated to helping university "players" guarantee themselves some "action each night of the week".
There are other causes for concern. Take for instance the headline statistic that 23% of all students will catch an STI by the end of their first year. This would be an alarming figure if it had been taken from, perhaps, records at the student health clinic or local STI clinic. Taken from a self-reported poll on a site such as shagatuni.com, however, it is impossible to take seriously.
For one, the poll takes no account of students who had an STI prior to joining university, but only discovered it or received a diagnosis while studying. On the flipside, there is also no guarantee that the respondents even had an STI - it is not unknown for teenage boys to give false positive responses as a joke. After all, it's only an online poll on a hook-up site. It's not like it matters, right?
Perhaps more damningly, despite all reports claiming the 23% figure represented all students, in fact only a subset of students were eligible for the poll:
The poll, which only involved people who had remained single while at university, also revealed that 73 per cent of students were under the influence of alcohol when engaging in the majority of their sexual encounters.
It is therefore unlikely that those questioned reflect the full university population, given that those in stable relationships (and presumably therefore less likely to be engaging in the kind of sexual behaviour most associated with a high risk of contracting an STI) weren't included.
An even more glaring "sample bias" is clearly at play here: only students who elected to sign up to shagatuni.com were included in the survey. Even among the student population who consider themselves to be single, those polled are unlikely to be representative. There's a strong possibility that those who would seek out and sign up to such a site engage in riskier sexual behaviour, and with multiple partners. In essence, that's the very business model of this website.
So, in summary, we have a relatively niche subset of a subset of a population, likely predisposed to more risky sexual behaviour, self-reporting in an online poll with no verification of their answers, and no incentive not to report a false positive as a joke. Hardly groundbreaking research.
But it gets worse. Let's consider the statistic itself. The number of students currently at university in England alone is around 1.6 million, out of which we can reasonably assume no more than 600,000 are in their first year. Meanwhile, according to the Health Protection Agency there were 450,000 STI diagnoses in England in 2012 – which would mean that the 23% of first year students contracting an STI represent 30% of the overall STI diagnoses for the entire country.
Even if we were to assume all students in every other year of their university career had an unblemished record of sexual health, it seems unlikely that university freshers represent almost a third of all STI cases.
Of course, none of this affects the underlying assertion that large numbers of students are engaging in unsafe sex and contracting STIs, but this poll and the associated news coverage can barely be said to offer anything new on the matter, given the compromised motives of the data source and the flawed methodology of the survey.
Still, we are now familiar with the name of the website, so the most important aim of the story was a success.
Michael Marshall is vice president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society. He writes and lectures on the role of PR in the tabloid news, and tweets as @MrMMarsh
