ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of risk and present data on selected high-risk practices from the European sexual surveys conducted between 1987 and 1993. It analyses the prevalence of these practices with respect to age group and gender and compared between countries. The chapter also analyses one of the practices within countries with respect to cohabitational status, place of residence and gender of the sexual partner; the degree of association with these background variables is then compared between countries. The prevalence of risk-related practices can be seen as estimates of the proportions of the population with a potential risk of becoming infected with HIV. The chapter discusses the extent to which such estimates actually correlate with the occurrence of HIV infection. The risk of HIV infection can be subdivided into risk of exposure and risk of virus transmission given exposure.
