By Arun Kumar

Washington, April 10 (IANS) Most young Indian immigrants in the US stay away from sex before marriage, but the second generation shows signs of more risky sexual behavior like the Americans, according to a new survey.
Focused on 18 to 24-year-old South Asians living in New York, the survey showed low level of sexual activity in the immigrant population and even lower in the first generation compared with the second generation.

Overall 55 percent respondents reported engaging in sexual activity, according to the survey by Neeti Joshi and her colleagues from the Department of Medical Informatics at the Columbia University.

The first generation constituted only 22 percent among them. For the second generation, the figure was 82 percent, said the study published in the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal.

It appears, the authors said, that the young immigrants eventually adopt the sexual practices of the new culture, after an intermediate period of uncertainty in which they have not abandoned the prior belief and have not accepted the new one completely.

"Using cognitive analysis, we documented distinct patterns of safe sex behavior and specific reasoning strategies associated with these patterns," reported Joshi and her colleagues Nicole Yoskowitz and Kelley Urry.

They also stated: "We have identified a pattern of low sexual activity in a sample of first and second-generation young-adult immigrant Indians, with significantly less sexual activity in the first generation."

Joshi's objective was to understand the influences on individual decision-making regarding the sexual activity of South Asians. She studied the attitudes and belief systems of young 'desis' with respect to their sexual behavior. 

In the process, she identified the socio-cognitive factors that push young immigrant adults to move towards risky sexual behavior in the US environment.

The beliefs and attitudes surveyed included information related to condom use beliefs, family expectations related to marriage, participant's preferences related to marriage and beliefs pertaining to HIV.

Overall, Joshi's study shows that transmission of beliefs from first to second generation is crucial with regard to decision-making governing safe sexual behavior.


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