So, 95% of Americans have had premarital sex, and that result hasn’t changed for decades? Can I be in line with all the people saying, B.S.?

1. What’s with the strong skewing towards women? 33,000 of the 38,000 people sampled were women. That’s … not a good demographic balance.
2. The data comes from the surveys taken “in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth”. “What’s the nature of this study?” is the question most asked by the people I’ve sent this to via email. [Especially by all my librarian friends.] We all wonder: is this study demographically skewed? Anytime you see federal studies of this sort, you wonder if they’re aimed at a demographic: we were all left wondering if it was perhaps something done with individuals who use Federal insurance safetynets [Medicare, Medicaid, etc.], stuff that skews towards low-income families and single parent households. I guess that I’m being prejudicial in assuming that low-income families are going to be more promiscuous, and if you want to skewer me for that, go ahead. But single mothers are often unwed mothers, so … that’s just the very definition of what we’re getting at here. But in any regard, I think that the larger point is that there’s concern on my end for the demography of the sample as to how it relates to the public as a whole. The AP story doesn’t give us much data on this.
3. Lastly, if you believe demographers that argue that, on the whole, people who identify as homosexual are 10% of our population, you’re accepting that there are twice as many self-identified homosexuals as there are self-identified premarital virgins. Now, I admit that, as a religiously-inclined engineer living in the American South that I’m surrounded by a population that one would presume to be more likely to count among its number the 5% minority, much less knowing folks who openly admit their homosexual identity, I … think I know a whole lot more people who claim to have stayed virgins until marriage than who identify as homosexuals.

I wouldn’t have blinked if this study had said 75%. I might not have spent much time thinking about it if it was 80-85%. But 95%? Doesn’t that just seem a little high to you?

[I'm aware that I'm allowing my own individual anecdotes affect my perceptions of this research. I guess I'm wanting to see the actual paper and the methodology to cure my skepticism.]