Study title

This qualitative dataset contains Estonian autobiographies, received through a biography writing competition conducted by the research project "Mosaic life. Upbringing, gender and sexuality in Finland, the Baltic countries and St. Petersburg". The competition announcement was published in 17 newspapers in Estonia and in addition, leaflets were distributed in various academic institutions. In the announcement, the researchers specified what kind of issues they were interested in, and instructed participants to write authentically and honestly about their life, as if they were writing to a close friend. The dataset consists of 35 biographies translated from Estonian into English. Similar competitions were held in Finland and St. Petersburg (Russia) (see FSD2549). The biographies describe people's concepts of love, Estonian family life, childhood and adulthood, whether sex was talked about at home and school, sexual experiences over the lifetime, importance of sex in the participants' lives, factors influencing their love and sexual life, marriages and other love relationships, experiences of loneliness, combining love and work, and unusual subcultures. The writing instructions also included a couple of questions related to pornography and prostitution. The dataset is only available in English.