The professor’s findings show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Jackie Farwell of the Bangor Daily News reports.

UMaine professor’s book looks at the sex lives of college students

College students are “hooking up” more than ever, having sex with a new person every weekend and reveling in every minute of free-for-all fornication, if you believe the images portrayed in movies, television and some newspapers.

But newly compiled research by a University of Maine professor paints a different picture. Dr. Sandra Caron, who teaches family studies and human sexuality at UMaine, presents the results of a sexuality survey she’s administered over the past 20 years to thousands of college students in her new book, “The Sex Lives of College Students: Two Decades of Attitudes and Behaviors.”

“In the media there’s been a lot of discussion about college students ‘hooking up’ and ‘friends with benefits’ and those kinds of terms we hear today,” Caron said. “I think people would be surprised to know that things haven’t really changed much from 20 years ago.”

Among her findings: College students report an average of three to four sex partners. A third of students say they’ve had five or more, but just as many have had one or two partners. Nearly half the respondents say they’ve gone a few months without sex at some point during college.

Eighty-seven percent of college students say they’ve had sex, unchanged from the 1990s. The age when students lost their virginity also hasn’t shifted much over the past two decades, with most having intercourse for the first time at 16 or 17.

Caron has collected the data since 1990 through a 100-question survey administered to students during the first week of her popular human sexuality class. She incorporates results from the anonymous, voluntary survey in her lessons, but the book marks the first culmination of the data, presenting a cross-section of nearly 5,000 students in all majors, freshman to seniors, aged 18 to 22. Two-thirds of the respondents are women, half are in a serious relationship, and most identify as heterosexual.