ArticleEClinicalMedicine
STI Risk Perception in the British Population and How It Relates to Sexual Behaviour and STI Healthcare Use: Findings From a Cross-sectional Survey (Natsal-3).
Article in EClinicalMedicine. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- "I would walk through fire to get this vaccine": a mixed-methods study examining attitudes and perceptions of a gonorrhoea vaccine programme among UK sexual health service users.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- Disabled people faced greater challenges accessing sexual and reproductive health services in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Britain: evidence from the Natsal-COVID survey.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Determinants of depressive symptoms in multinational middle-aged and older adults.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- Who attends a free sexual health center in Paris for HIV/STI screening? an observational study.BMC public health · 2025Observational
- The Past, Present, and Future in the Diagnosis of a Neglected Sexually Transmitted Infection: Trichomoniasis.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- The relationship between age and sex partner counts during the mpox outbreak in the UK, 2022.PloS one · 2023Article
- Commentary: Multipurpose prevention technologies-What about sexually transmitted infections?Frontiers in reproductive health · 2023Article
- Undisclosed Sexual Risk Exposures: Results of a Nationwide Compliance Study among Whole Blood Donors in Germany.Transfusion medicine and hemotherapy : offizielles Organ der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Transfusionsmedizin und Immunhamatologie · 2022Article
- Web-Based Risk Prediction Tool for an Individual's Risk of HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections Using Machine Learning Algorithms: Development and External Validation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
- A Machine-Learning-Based Risk-Prediction Tool for HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections Acquisition over the Next 12 Months.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Article
- Significant Associations betweenInfectious diseases in obstetrics and gynecology · 2022Article
- Time to healthcare seeking following the onset of symptoms among men and women attending a sexual health clinic in Melbourne, Australia.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- Distance as explanatory factor for sexual health centre utilization: an urban population-based study in the Netherlands.European journal of public health · 2021Article
- Interest in Sexually Transmitted Infections: Analysis of Web Search Data Terms in Eleven Large German Cities from 2015 to 2019.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Navigating new sexual partnerships in midlife: a socioecological perspective on factors shaping STI risk perceptions and practices.Sexually transmitted infections · 2020Article
- High Interest in Syphilis Pre-exposure and Post-exposure Prophylaxis Among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men in Vancouver and Toronto.Sexually transmitted diseases · 2020Article
- Latent class analysis of sexual health markers among men and women participating in a British probability sample survey.BMC public health · 2020Article
- Article
- Pathways to, and use of, sexual healthcare among Black Caribbean sexual health clinic attendees in England: evidence from cross-sectional bio-behavioural surveys.BMC health services research · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWe investigated how STI risk perception relates to behavioural STI risk and STI healthcare (sexual health clinic attendance/chlamydia testing) in the British population.
methodsNatsal-3, a national probability-sample survey undertaken 2010-12, included 8397 sexually-active 16-44 year-olds. Participants rated their risk of STIs (excluding HIV) given their current sexual lifestyle. Urine from a randomly-selected sub-sample of participants (n = 4550) was tested for prevalent STIs (
findingsMost men (64% (95% CI: 62-66)) and women (73% (72-74)) rated themselves as not at all at risk of STIs, 30% (29-32) men and 23% (22-25) women self-rated as not very much, and 5% (5-6) men and 3% (3-4) women as greatly/quite a lot at risk. Although those reporting STI risk behaviours were more likely to perceive themselves as at risk, > 70% men and > 85% women classified as having had unsafe sex in the past year, and similar proportions of those with a prevalent STI, perceived themselves as not at all or not very much at risk. Increased risk perception was associated with greater STI healthcare-use (past year), although not after adjusting for sexual behaviour, indicating in a mediation analysis that risk perception was neither necessary or sufficient for seeking care Furthermore, 58% (48-67) men and 31% (22-41) women who had unsafe sex (past year) and rated themselves as greatly/quite a lot at risk had neither attended nor tested.
interpretationMany people at risk of STIs in Britain underestimated their risk, and many who correctly perceived themselves to be at risk had not recently accessed STI healthcare. Health promotion needs to address this mismatch and ensure that people access healthcare appropriate to their needs.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.