Collecting and exploiting data to understand a nations sexual health needs: Implications for the British National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal)

Accurate information about a nation’s sexual health is essential to plan and evaluate services, inform prevention efforts, and contribute to societal discourse on sexuality. In Britain, sexual health data come from a range of sources. There are world-class surveillance data on STIs and reproductive health, although these only represent people attending services and collect limited data.1 2 A number of British surveys draw on convenience samples of populations of particular interest, such as sexual health clinic attendees, men who have sex with men and particular ethnic groups,3–7 and are therefore not generalisable to the wider population. Furthermore, such surveys often focus on specific aspects of sexual health (eg, STIs), and while some nationally representative surveys have included questions on sex and relationships, space limitations mean that questions are restricted to a small number of key behaviours…

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