Young people know much more about contraception than about fertility according to the latest ESRI reports while a large cohort of young women regret their first act of sexual intercourse.

Knowledge of the best method for STI prevention is high among young people aged 20 (with over 80 per cent of young men and women correctly identifying condoms).

However, knowledge of fertility (specifically the period during the female menstrual cycle when pregnancy is most likely to occur) is much lower, with just 21 per cent of men, and 37 per cent of women, answering correctly.

Furthermore, young women were significantly more likely to express regret over the timing of first sex than young men (a quarter of young women thought that it had happened ‘too soon’, in contrast to 10 per cent of young men who thought it had happened ‘too soon’). Later age of sexual initiation was associated with a lower probability of perceiving that first sex had occurred ‘too soon’.