That’s what city officials wanted to know.  To find out, the city’s Bureau of Epidemiology Services conducted a telephone survey delving into the private lives of 10,000 New Yorkers for the year 2006.  On Tuesday, the New York City (NYC) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the details in a report entitled “Are New Yorkers Having Safe Sex?”

Some revelations on sexual activity in general include:

• 72% of adult New Yorkers say they were sexually active during the year.
• Just over 11% of them say they had sex with two or more partners.
• 17% of the men claimed multiple partners while 6% of the women did.
• 25% of younger adults, age 18 to 24, report multiple partners versus just 6% of those 45 and older.
• Of all racial and ethnic groups in the city, Asians are the least likely to have sex with multiple partners.
• 33% of the homosexual population reported more than one partner but only 13% of the heterosexual population did so.
• 5% of the respondents who identified themselves as being married or in a steady relationship reported having two or more sex partners in the previous year.
• 23% of the city’s homosexual men reported five or more partners within the previous year while 6% of the heterosexual men reported the same.

Questions about contraception and condom use revealed:

• 60% of the city’s residents reporting multiple partners said they used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter.
• 43% who claimed to be in committed relationships but had multiple partners used condoms during their last encounter.
• 62% of the city’s women and 61% of the men say they use condoms.
• New Yorkers between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely to use condoms than older New Yorkers.
• 66% of Hispanic New Yorkers reported condom use versus 55% of the white population.
• 55% of the men reporting sexual activities with both male and female partners said they used a condom during their last sexual experience.
• 75% of the men who had sex only with other men said they  used condoms always.
• 34% of the women said condom use was the only form of contraception used during their most recent sexual experience.
• 7% of the women report using both a condom and a hormone-based method of contraception.
• 8% of the women and 5% of the men say that in the previous year they received information, counseling, or a prescription for emergency contraception.

In New York City in 2006, more than half of all pregnancies were not planned.  More than 60,000 NYC residents were diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections, of which 3,745 of them were new HIV-positive diagnoses.  City officials recommend two forms of contraception as the most effective - the hormone-based contraceptive helps prevent pregnancies and the condom minimizes the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infection.

Source: NYT