Love during lockdown: findings from an online survey examining the impact of COVID-19 on the sexual health of people living in Australia
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Abstract
Australia recorded its first case of COVID-19 in late January 2020. On 22P March 2020, amid increasing daily case numbers, the Australian Government implemented lockdown restrictions to help ‘flatten the curve’. Our study aimed to understand the impact of lockdown restrictions on sexual and reproductive health. Here we focus on sexual practices.
Methods
An online survey was open from the 23PP April 2020 to 11P May 2020. Participants were recruited online via social media and other networks and were asked to report on their sexual practices in 2019 and during lockdown. Logistic regression was used to calculate the difference (diff) (including 95% CIs) in the proportion of sex practices between time periods.
Results
Of the 1187 who commenced the survey, 965 (81.3%) completed it. Overall, 70% were female and 66.3% were aged 18–29 years. Most (53.5%) reported less sex during lockdown than in 2019. Compared with 2019, participants were more likely to report sex with a spouse (35.3% vs 41.7%; diff=6.4%; 95% CI 3.6 to 9.2) and less likely to report sex with a girl/boyfriend (45.1% vs 41.8%; diff=−3.3%; 95% CI −7.0 to -0.4) or with casual hook-up (31.4% vs 7.8%; 95% CI −26.9 to -19.8). Solo sex activities increased; 14.6% (123/840) reported using sex toys more often and 26.0% (218/838) reported masturbating more often. Dating app use decreased during lockdown compared with 2019 (42.1% vs 27.3%; diff= −14.8%; 95% CI −17.6 to -11.9). Using dating apps for chatting/texting (89.8% vs 94.5%; diff=4.7%; 95% CI 1.0 to 8.5) and for setting up virtual dates (2.6% vs 17.2%; diff=14.6%; 95% CI 10.1 to 19.2) increased during lockdown.
Conclusion
Although significant declines in sexual activity during lockdown were reported, people did not completely stop engaging in sexual activities, highlighting the importance of ensuring availability of normal sexual and reproductive health services during global emergencies.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.10.20171348: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: This study was approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (ID: 2056693). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis Data analysis: A sample size of 800 would allow us to detect a difference in paired proportions of 6% (55% vs 56%) assuming a correlation of 0.25, power of 80% and alpha of 0.05. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences …SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.10.20171348: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: This study was approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (ID: 2056693). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis Data analysis: A sample size of 800 would allow us to detect a difference in paired proportions of 6% (55% vs 56%) assuming a correlation of 0.25, power of 80% and alpha of 0.05. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Our findings should be interpreted within their limitations. Namely, we used convenience sampling to recruit participants, and our resultant sample was largely homogenous, with most participants identifying as female, aged <30 years, and well educated. We also had an over-representation of WSW. Further limitations include recall bias, particularly for data on activity during 2019, and missing data for several variables (although this was usually ≤13%). Several participants also initiated the survey but did not complete it. Those who completed the survey were more likely to be older than those who did not. However, our study is novel in providing unique insight into changes in sexual activity during the peak of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions (to-date) among a cohort of people living in Australia and its strengths will be realised in subsequent cohort analyses of future waves of data. The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures it prompted clearly impacted the sexual activity of people living in Australia. Although restrictions are beginning to ease across most of the country, recent spikes in cases in Melbourne [20], the second largest city in Australia, serve as a reminder that the pandemic is still with us and probably will be for some time. It is therefore essential to continue to monitor changes in sexual activity, and associated implications for sexual and reproductive health. In the short term, as restrictions lift and people increasingly engage in casual sex, sexual...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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