Okay so let's get serious and do the reading for once. The actual study performed is
right here (click
download PDF' on the right). It's only 5 pages if you don't check their numbers or references and assume the peer reviewers did their job. As someone with zero experience reading academic-level public health publications, I definitely didn't understand everything, and occassionally I found it pretty dense, but I think I can confidently say the following:
-The object of the study is sexual inexperience,
not virginity. Great headline, Forbes, ya dingdongs.
-Surveys were performed by people coming by houses. Response rates look good at 70-80%, but I'm not sure if shame would skew the results (people not wanting to admit sexual activity, or the lack thereof, on papers that could hypothetically be read by the people who just rang your doorbell). Only covers heterosexual experiences, too, as Forbes correctly indicates.
-The National Fertility Survey they use heavily oversamples the 35-39 year old demographic, at almost triple the rate it samples 18-19 year olds (note how the brackets cover 4 and 2 years of age respectively, possibly explaining why there are fewer 18-19 year olds questioned).
-To balance the above, they weigh all groups equally. For this the researchers have used Japanese census data. Note that this is
not the same sample group as the ones questioned in the survey, although I imagine the scale here is large enough to assume both groups are statistically relevant and thus comparable. By the researchers own admission this could theoretically skew the confidence intervals. I think that means "the chance that this data is statistically significant", but to be honest I'm not sure.
-They're only looking for association with a single other question from the survey as far as I can tell, which is whether people hope to get married in the future. Thus they're assuming those hoping to marry might also want to have sex. See citation below.
In fact, around 80% of women and men aged 25–39 years
who reported no heterosexual experience in our study
responded that they wished to get married in their lifetime, indicating that their lack of sexual experience may
be involuntary.
Frankly I'm not sure how convincing this is. Sure, they're citing 2 sources upon which they base their other assumption (that everyone who is, or has been married, has had sex). But I'm not sure if a future desire to marry is a great indicator that someone is unhappy with their lack of sexual experiences. I don't know enough about Japanese culture, but assuming they marry late, they wouldn't just get hitched for the nookie. Might be that it was the closest question they could find in the survey...
It's weird how this appears to be the only indicator they're basing this 'involuntary sexual inexperience' thing on though; there's a whole bunch of environmental control variables used for the rest of the analysis, why not here? Why aren't they trying more than a single variable to find correlation with? Maybe I just don't get statistics???
Found this tidbit interesting:
The reasons for the substantially larger proportion of Japanese adults who report no heterosexual experience, as compared with those in other high-income countries, remain to be investigated.
The way I'm reading this, is that they can't explain why Japanese people become sexually active later in their lives, because no comparative studies with Japan have yet been performed. They also mention how there's basically no useful comparable data on other high-income Asian countries, so that's why they're comparing with the U.K., Denmark, Australia and a few others instead.
Not sure if that means it could indicate a broader trend in Asia (or even worldwide) we're not seeing, or whether Japan is a relative outlier (although that appears to be the assumption here).
So about the
reason people aren't having sex, looks like Forbes got that one right.
Among men, temporary or part-time employment, unemployment and low income were associated with a higher likelihood of having no heterosexual experience.
HOWEVER. Association is not causation! If you throw a million variables into an associative model, they will eventually start producing significant correlations. Obviously isn't the case here, but it's not outright proof.
Now, about that Forbes headline... The study
never mentions virginity anywhere, besides in its keyword search and in a reference. It's a rubbish title, and Forbes knows it. Look, their own article contradicts the title they've chosen:
The survey also doesn't account for people who may have had experience in their past but have since become sexually inactive.
That's something else than 'virginity'; the survey question used to measure sexual inexperience is "have you had vaginal intercourse with a member of the opposite sex". The study indeed doesn't cover people who have had sex before, but haven't gotten laid in a while, and they say so explicitly. See the citation quoted below.
Fifth, our analyses underestimate the level of sexual inactivity in the population as those who have previous sexual experience may still be sexually inactive.
Everyone who has had heterosexual, vaginal intercourse once in their lives is deemed sexually active for the purposes of this study. Might seem broad and sweeping, but, well, they're not really interested in the yes-group, the study tries to outline relevant variables associated with the no-group.
(All of this is of course ignoring the fact that virginity is a utterly trash social construct. By framing the concept of virginity as something that can only be lost, given away, or even taken -but never reinstated-, it becomes associated with conquest, robbery, and theft. This in turn feeds beliefs that those who have not preserved their virginity are of different societal status than those who have.
By establishing this completely arbitrary watershed between virgins and non-virgins [it's such garbage, we don't even have a word for those who aren't virgins!!!], it's possible to ridicule virgins for their lack of experience; or conversely damn them for being 'too promiscuous'. Upholding the myth of virginity is to support a repulsive method of limiting the sexual development of young people, born from the unhealthy desire to control other people's sex lives. The fact that Forbes knowingly misrepresented this scientific study in an admittedly rather minor way just to get the word 'virgin' in the title shows how prevalent this stupid concept and people's obsession with it is.)