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Three percent of women are addicted to sex, according to German scientists.

Researchers said the latest findings come from the first major study on 'hypersexual' women whose sexual habits interfere with their normal lives.

Common problems associated with sex addiction include high rates of masturbation and pornography use.

After questioning 1,000 German women on how often they masturbated, watched porn and the number of their sexual partners, researchers at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg found that three percent of participants suffered from extreme sexual addiction.

Researchers said that many of the women in the study were college students. All participants were asked to fill out the Hypersexual Behavior Inventory, a questionnaire that includes 19 questions that determine the level of dependency people have for sexual intercourse.

"Masturbation frequency, pornography use, and the number of sexual partners were associated with higher degrees in hypersexuality measured by the HBI," lead researcher Verena Klein and her team wrote in the study.

"Especially the frequency of impersonal sexual activity was a stronger predictor for hypersexual behavior compared to the number of sexual partners in logistic regression analysis," they added.

While previous studies suggest that hypersexual women only used passive forms of sexual behavior, researchers wrote that the "results of the current study do not support the idea of previous research that hypersexual women are typically engaged in more passive forms of sexual behavior, and contradict the assumption that hypersexual women only use sexual behavior to control and influence interpersonal relationships."

"It is still a challenge for researchers to identify individuals who may require treatment, without falsely stigmatizing others and their 'normal' or non-pathological sexual behavior," researchers wrote.

The findings were published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.