Those behind both the Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR) and the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) recently released their findings, providing an illustration of the sexual practices of today's adults. Both studies had a lot of interesting information to report, but there was one obvious omission: both left out statistics on older adults. The sample for the NATSAL was between the ages of 18 and 44, while the ASHR's sample was between the ages of 18 and 69. This void in the research is problematic because, as sexologists know, sex does not stop at 60. In fact, there is evidence that the rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS among older adults are rising.
"Studies such as the ASHR and the NATSAL, by deliberating excluding older adults from their samples, perpetuate ageist attitudes and assumptions by continuing to render older adults' sexuality invisible," Sue Malta of the National Ageing Research Institute wrote for Science 2.0.
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