A new study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior offers a fascinating analysis of the way American adults' sex lives changed between the years 1989 and 2014. Specifically, it focuses on changes in the estimated number of times per year that Americans reported having had sex using data from the General Social Survey (GSS), a nationally representative U.S. survey that is conducted annually. The results suggest that, overall, Americans today are less sexually active than they were a quarter century ago.

Before we quantify this, let’s first step back and look at exactly what was asked of participants. Each year on the GSS, participants were prompted to estimate how often they had sex during the last 12 months using a scale ranging from 0—meaning “not at all”—to 6—meaning “more than three times a week.” These responses were then rescaled in order to compute an estimated total number of times per year that each person had sex. For example, a score of 6 (the highest number of the scale) was recorded as the equivalent of having had sex 260 times per year (assuming an average of 5 times per week for 52 weeks). As you can see, we’re obviously not dealing with precise numbers here, so do keep that limitation in mind.

Once the researchers made these calculations, they looked at the estimated overall average number of times Americans reported having sex each year, and this is what they found: