Study title

The dataset contains 149 sexual life histories written by Finnish men and women for a national writing competition, advertised in popular magazines in 1992. The autobiographies were collected as part of the FINSEX research project studying Finnish sexuality. In the writing competition invitation, participants were asked to describe significant events, issues, experiences and feelings related to their sexual history, sexual life at that moment, and own sexuality in general, including sexual identity. While the participants were asked to write freely, they were also given a broad schema they could use to direct their narratives. The length of the autobiographies varied from one to 46 pages. Background information included the participant's gender, age, occupation or other economic activity, and involvement in and type of couple relationship. The dataset is only available in Finnish, with the exception of one autobiography available in Swedish.