Background

1. An Investigation of the Relationship between Gender, Religiosity, and Perceptions of Female Sexual Responsibility Clare J. Bucklin, Andrea D. Stripling, Nicolas R. Albers, Nathan R. LeMaster, Andrew W. ReedFaculty Advisor: S. Jean Caraway, Ph.D. Department of Psychology • Participants • Data were obtained from undergraduate students (N = 117) enrolled in psychology courses at The University of South Dakota (Males = 38.5%, Females = 61.5%), with age ranging from eighteen to twenty-two. 91.4% of participants (N = 106) identified as Caucasian, while the remaining identified as Hispanic/Latino (3.4%), Native American (1.7%), biracial (1.7%), African American (0.9%), and multiracial (0.9%). Significantly, 15.7% (N = 18) of participants identified themselves as student athletes, 18.8% (N = 22) as members of a fraternity or sorority, and 51.3% (N = 60) as single. Participants were given a small number of extra credit points in a psychology course of their choice per the instructor’s discretion. • Method • Participants were given a demographics questionnaire and another questionnaire with items relating to twelve short narratives they were asked to read through, all of which described a male and a female who had just met engaging in vaginal intercourse preceded by moderate alcohol consumption in a public setting. The demographics questionnaire was used to obtain religiosity ratings based on a Likert-type scale: • “On the scale below, please indicate how much religion is important to you on a day-to-day basis.” • Possible answers ranged from one (meaning not at all important) to eight (meaning extremely important). • Based on the narrative readings, they were asked to give two ratings: • Who do you think was more responsible for the outcome of this situation? • Male (please give a number (from one to 100) to indicate the percentage you think best represents how responsible he was for the outcome of this situation_______ • Female (please give a number (from one to 100) to indicate the percentage you think best represents how responsible she was for the outcome of this situation_______ • Because some of the vignettes involved coercion and even rape, we had to control for these important contextual factors by deriving our results only from the narratives that depicted consensual intercourse. We then calculated the means of each participant’s responses, which constitute the values for the dependent variable (percentage of perceived female responsibility). Results A two-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to explore the impact of gender and religiosity rating on perceived female sexual responsibility, as measured by the percentage-based scale included on the questionnaire for the vignettes. Subjects were divided into two groups based on gender and general religiosity rating. The interaction effect between gender and religiosity was not statistically significant, F (1, 113) = 2.63, p = 0.11, nor were the main effects for religiosity and gender separately, F (1, 113) = 0.34, p = 0.56, and F (1, 113) = 1.71, p = 0.28, respectively. We only had two groups; therefore, we could not run a post-hoc analysis. Discussion Although the ANOVA results failed to achieve statistical significance, the mean percentage given by more religious females (53.7%) was higher than that given by less religious females (47.9%), as well by more religious males (51.5%). We also found that less religious males gave a slightly higher mean rating (52.6%) than their more religious counterparts. These results are visualized in Table 1. Clearly, our small sample size presented a substantial limitation, as did the fact that our sample was not random and did not contain equal distributions for the groups examined. Rather, more religious females (N = 44) composed a disproportionate amount of our sample (37.6%), while the remaining categories, including more religious males (N = 24; 20.5%), less religious females (N = 28; 23.9%), and less religious males (N = 21, 17.9%), were all relatively underrepresented. Furthermore, we chose to make our Likert scale a two-point one because the eight-point one on the actual questionnaire did not provide us much information on the qualitative aspects of respondents’ religiosity; this presented a limitation, as well, because a more detailed Likert scale (i.e. one with descriptions corresponding to each numerical value, such as: “I chose a 4 because I believe in God but rarely pray or attend religious services,” etc.) would have allowed us to assess our religiosity variable more precisely, thereby elucidating any patterns present in the data had the results reached statistical significance. Additionally, the fact that our gender variable came notably closer to approaching statistical significance (p = 0.28) than our religiosity variable (p = 0.56) is consistent with research findings that religious belief tends to have more of an impact on female sexual behaviors and attitudes than on those of males (Brody & Rau, 1996; Burdette & Hill, 2009).  However, the relationship between gender and religiosity was nearest to statistical significance (p = 0.11), which may help to explain the more or less opposite patterns, based on gender, displayed in Table 1.  Finally, suggestions for future research based on this data would include exploring possible correlations between averaged female responsibility ratings and other demographic variables (e.g. student athlete status, fraternity or sorority membership, marital status, and ethnicity), as well as investigating how perceptions of male sexual responsibility are affected by the demographic variables, including the independent variables in this study. Background Rural Midwestern settings are generally characterized by high religiosity and, as a result, social conservatism (Chalfant & Heller, 1991; Kipp, 2007; Lewis & Huyser, 2010; Silk, 2005). Specifically, having strong religious beliefs is also linked to holding traditional views of women’s roles and sexuality, particularly among females (Brody & Rau, 1996; Burdette & Hill, 2009; Colaner & Giles, 2008; Mak & Tsang, 2008; Meier, 2003; Zaleski & Schiaffino, 2000). Thus, one might expect a person’s level of religiosity to affect his or her perception of how accountable a female should be held for a sexual encounter occurring (Ahrold & Meston, 2010; Lottes & Kuriloff, 1994; Vazsonyi & Jenkins, 2010). Purpose of Study The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of the strength of participants’ religious beliefs on their perceptions of how responsible females are for engaging in sexual activity - regardless of who initiated it. We hypothesized that participants who rated religion as highly important in their daily lives were more likely to rate women as being more responsible for sexual encounters taking place than those who did not. We also predicted that gender would influence accountability ratings such that women who gave higher religiosity ratings would also give higher accountability ratings, and vice versa. Additionally, we expected that women’s accountability ratings, regardless of religiosity rating, would be higher overall than those of men participating. References: (1) Ahrold, T.K., & Meston, C.M. (2010). Ethnic Differences in Sexual Attitudes of U.S. College Students: Gender, Acculturation, and Religiosity Factors. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39 (2010), 190-202. (2) Brody, S., & Rau, H. (1996). Traditional Ideology as an Inhibitor of Sexual Behavior. The Journal of Psychology, 130 (6), 615-26. (3) Burdette, A.M., & Hill, T.D. (2009). 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