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Tattoos and body piercings in the United States: A national data set

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Background

Little is known about the prevalence and consequences of body art application.

Objective

Our aim was to provide US tattooing and body piercing prevalence, societal distribution, and medical and social consequence data.

Methods

Random digit dialing technology was used to obtain a national probability sample of 253 women and 247 men who were 18 to 50 years of age.

Results

Of our respondents, 24% had tattoos and 14% had body piercings. Tattooing was equally common in both sexes, but body piercing was more common among women. Other associations were a lack of religious affiliation, extended jail time, previous drinking, and recreational drug use. Local medical complications, including broken teeth, were present in one third of those with body piercings. The prevalence of jewelry allergy increased with the number of piercings. Of those with tattoos, 17% were considering removal but none had had a tattoo removed.

Limitations

This was a self-reported data set with a 33% response rate.

Conclusion

Tattooing and body piercing are associated with risk-taking activities. Body piercing has a high incidence of medical complications.

Section snippets

Methods

After a series of pretests, trained interviewers from the Public Opinion Laboratory at Northern Illinois University administered a telephone survey to 500 respondents aged 18 to 50 years between February 11 and April 18, 2004.

The respondents were selected using random digit dialing (RDD) to obtain a national probability sample within the 48 contiguous United States with approximately equal numbers of men and women. RDD allows for very wide coverage of an area, as it includes numbers for

Results

Respondents were equally distributed throughout the age range (median and mean ages, 36 years [standard deviation 9.44 years]). They were representative of the nation according to race, Hispanic ancestry, marital status, household size, median household income, educational status, and religious affiliation. (Table I, column 1). There was an increase in the total number of people with or considering getting body art (tattoos and body piercings) in each successive age group. (Table I and Fig 1).

Discussion

The 33% response rate for this RDD survey is within the expectable range given the known increasing difficulties of doing telephone surveys.6 Importantly, refusals were not related to the body art content of the questionnaire and, as such, should not have contributed to any systematic bias in the results.

Our findings of a national prevalence rate of 24% tattooing among people 18 to 50 years old are very similar to the findings of two 2003 national probability samples, both of which asked only a

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    Supported by the Portes Center administered through the Institute of Medicine of Chicago and the Sage Foundation.

    Conflicts of interest: None identified.

    Current affiliation: Department of Dermatology, Northwestern University; data collected while in the Section of Dermatology, University of Chicago; analysis started while at the University of Chicago and continued while at Northwestern University.

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