摘要：I used data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth to measure sexual orientation and viral sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates among US women aged 15 to 44 years. Sexual behavior and sexual identity data indicated that 1.3% to 1.9% of the women were lesbians and 3.1% to 4.8% were bisexual. Self-reported viral STD rates were significantly higher among bisexual women (15.0% to 17.2%) than among lesbians (2.3% to 6.7%). These findings support the need for STD prevention interventions that consider lesbians and bisexual women separately. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine proposed to better define lesbian sexual orientation to estimate the lesbian population size more accurately. 1 The Institute of Medicine also recommended funding large-scale probability surveys to determine how lesbian sexual orientation is defined and to examine the prevalence of risks among lesbians. The proportion of women who are lesbian or bisexual was estimated to be 1.3% to 10%, and sexually transmitted disease (STD) and HIV rates were different between lesbians and bisexual women. 2 – 6 However, no study has examined how defining lesbians and bisexual women by their sexual identity, behavior, attraction, or desire, or some combination of these, is associated with their STD rates. I examined how combining sexual behavior and identity to classify women can affect the numbers of lesbians and bisexual women identified and how self-reported STD rates differ between these 2 populations.
