By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY

A new study suggests that about one in four U.S. women feel significantly distressed about sexual problems, challenging a widely quoted report that says 43% of women suffer from "sexual dysfunction."

Unlike the earlier research, the Kinsey Institute survey asked women whether they were troubled by their sex lives or feelings about sex. The verdict: 24.4% said they had a problem.

Women with good mental health who feel close to a partner during lovemaking are most likely to be sexually satisfied. Physical aspects, such as arousal and frequency of orgasm, have little to do with whether a woman is distressed about sex, Kinsey Institute director John Bancroft says. A report on the phone survey of 853 women will appear this summer in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

A University of Chicago study published in 1999 asked women whether they lacked desire or had other symptoms, such as inability to have an orgasm, for at least several months in the past year. Forty-three percent reported such symptoms, prompting news reports and medical publications to peg the results as the "dysfunction" level of women.

"Dysfunctional for whom?" Bancroft asks. If a woman is stressed or has children and a job, she might put sex on the back burner for good reason. "It could be adaptive for her. ... It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with her response system or that she's dysfunctional."

On the contrary, the fact that mental health and closeness to a partner are linked to sexual satisfaction "suggests if the rest of her life is in place, a woman's sexuality will shine through." Most women don't need hormones or drugs to have satisfying sex, Bancroft says.

But many could benefit, says urologist Jennifer Berman, director of the Female Sexual Medicine Center at UCLA. Most women with sexual complaints have medical and emotional or relationship problems, Berman says. They may have hormonal imbalances, or take medicines that interfere with sex.

As baby boomers age, they're not going to be as content with so-so sex as their mothers were, she says. "They're not going to say, 'This is what God gave us.' They're going to make good sex a priority."

Drugs to improve sexual response are likely to have serious side effects and could create pressure for couples, cautions Leonore Tiefer, a women's sexuality expert at New York University Medical School. "The drug business is all based on the male model. It's focused on the genitals." Studies show no link between measures of genital arousal in women and sexual satisfaction, she says.

The Kinsey survey didn't include men, but the Chicago study found 30% had sexual dysfunctions.

Bancroft favors far more research on women's sexuality, "and we have to listen to the women rather than making assumptions."