The survey, which was conducted over two years, aimed to assess knowledge, sources of information and attitudes on subjects like reproduction, sexuality, STD/HIV/AIDS and family planning. It also attempted to identify attitudinal and other differences between the sexes.

The study interviewed 4,709 respondents (1,974 males and 2,735 females) aged between 15 and 29 at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad,Imphal, Jabalpur, Jamshedpur, Lucknow, Chennai, New Delhi, Patna, Pune, Rajkot, Ropar and Thiruvananthapuram.

It found that young people feel a lack of confidence in senior citizens. ``Surprisingly, a large number of respondents admitted to be sexually active, irrespective of their marital status, but did not quite know much about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. Now this is quite a serious thing as it directly places youth in the high-risk category,'' Virupax said.The survey did not find any shift in the traditional tendency of young men to depend on peers for information on sexual matters and of women to depend on their mothers. But less than a fourth of the respondents had correct knowledge about masturbation, orgasm and oral and anal sex, indicating that these sources of information are not reliable.

Less than 40 per cent of the youth had accurate information about conception and heterosexual intercourse, while more men than women had correct knowledge on all these factors including conception.However, despite this, the survey also shows a huge generation gap between the present generation and the earlier one, Virupax says.

According to Dr Prakash Kothari, professor and chief, Department of Sexual Medicine,

G S Medical College and KEM Hospital, Indian youth are a confused lot on sex-related matters largely because Indian society has not realised that sex education is the only way to vaccinate them from sexual diseases.Respondents were required to answer a standardised self-administered, semi-structured questionnaire, designed in consultation with experts on sex education. The questionnaire covered areas such as preferred person with whom sexual matters are discussed, knowledge of masturbation, homosexuality, heterosexuality and conception, formal sex education received, knowledge of the types of sexual intercourse, correct knowledge of the mode of STD/HIV infection and preventive measures, sexual experience and practice, including the use of family planning methods and the respondents' opinionon premarital sex, virginity and orgasm.

The responses clearly indicated that both parents and teachers were ill-equipped to answer sex-related queries and that there was an acute need for proper sex education at the school level.