KEY POINTS
- A new poll has asked men from 13 countries how often they sit down when urinating.
- Australians were among the most enthusiastic 'sitzpinklers'.
- Some take a situational approach when it comes to sitting or standing.
It's an issue that's sparked think pieces and plenty of online discussions, and now, a new survey claims to have the answer to a question that appears to be on the minds of many: how often do men sit down when urinating?
Male respondents, aged at least 18 years old, in 13 countries were asked how frequently they did this while going to the toilet to only wee in a YouGov poll published on Tuesday.
When the results were shared by a Reddit user, they lit up the social media site, where many discussions on this topic have previously taken place.
The question was asked in the wake of by British journalist at The Guardian, Sam Wollaston — a "proud 'sitzpinkler'" (German for a man who sits down to urinate). In it, he wrote there was "no reliable data" on the issue and called for the polling company to "get on it".
"In February of this year, Guardian journalist Sam Wollaston called YouGov out for our lack of data on how many British men sit down to urinate," YouGov's head of data journalism, Matthew Smith, wrote on Tuesday.
"Kicking ourselves for this glaring omission from our Public Data archive, we have since conducted a 13-country study on men’s peeing preferences internationally."
Australian men are enthusiastic 'sitzpinklers', according to the survey, with 25 per cent of respondents saying they always sit down to relieve themselves. That was the highest figure behind Germany (40 per cent), where signs telling men to sit down to pee are common in public bathrooms.
Mr Wollaston wrote about 70 per cent of his male friends, mostly aged in their 50s, that he posed the question to said they were "standers". The poll found 33 per cent of Britons surveyed never sat down to take a whizz, although that figure was 40 per cent among those aged 55 and over.
Mexican men were the most likely to never take a seat to urinate.
Source: Supplied / YouGov
A Reddit user shared the survey results on the social media site's Australia's community in a post that attracted hundreds of comments. Some were supportive of the sit-down method, while others were surprised at how many Australian respondents indicated they adhered to it.
"Sit down pee man here. Can confirm that it's more comfortable," one Redditor wrote.
Said another: "It's so much better, never have to worry about aiming, never any mess to clean up. all men should sit down imo (in my opinion)."
There were also those who took a situational approach when deciding whether to pee standing up or sitting down.
"I always take a seat when at work. Boss makes a dollar, what I earn is a crime... that's why I'm chilling in the bathroom on company time," one user wrote.
"I used to stand.. but then I started sitting down and haven’t looked back since (except for in public toilets)," another said.
Some said sitting down also had health benefits, and for some men, this might be true.
A 2014 meta-analysis — in which the results of a number of previous studies are summarised — by researchers from the Department of Urology at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands found for men with lower urinary tract symptoms, "the sitting voiding position is preferable to the standing".
But it also concluded: "There is medically no superior posture for healthy men to urinate in."
SBS News has contacted YouGov for comment.
