Peers, Parents, Media, and Education: Influences on Sexual Behavior

1. Peers, Parents, Media, and Education: Influences on Sexual Behavior Danelle Pattison And Jessica Rouse Hanover College

2. Research Objective • The main goal of this study is to determine the relative contribution of four sources of influence on sexual behavior: parents, peers, the media, and sexual education classes.

3. Peer-oriented adolescents engage in more sexual activities than parent-oriented adolescents (Owuamanam, 1983) Friends are rated highest in shaping sexual behavior (Kakavoulis & Forrest, 1998) Hypothesis and Supporting Research We hypothesize that peers are the driving force in a person’s sexual decisions and have the greatest influence on sexual behaviors.

4. Procedure • Created questionnaire to measure: • Frequency of 32 sexual behaviors • Perceived acceptance of these behaviors by our 4 different factors: • Parents • Peers • Media • Past sex education classes

5. Rouse-Pattison Sexual Behavior and Sexual Acceptance Scales Click on the corresponding circle that best describes the frequency of your overall sexual behavior.

6. On the scale below, please rate your perception of the general acceptance of each behavior by clicking the appropriate circle for each of the four different groups.  

7. Procedure continued • Survey posted online • Available through psych experiment website • E-mailed students at Hanover and other colleges with survey link • 273 Internet participants, 230 sets of data analyzed • Dropped if data corrupted (not interpretable) or >21 missing responses

8. 78% female, 22% male Age: mean = 22 16-22: 80.3% 23-30: 12.2% 31-40: 5.2% 41-50: 1.7% 51-60: 0.4% Race White: 88% Black: 5% East Asian: 3% Latino/a: 1% American Indian: 0.5% Other: 3% Demographics

9. Interesting Gender Differences all ps < .05

10. Preliminary Analysis • Ran multiple regression on all 32 behaviors separately with the four factors for each behavior •Each Behavior = Parents + Peers + Media + Education • Perceived acceptance of peers was significantly positively related to frequency for all but four sexual behaviors, which had very low variance in frequency: • Hugging, closed-mouth kissing, oral stimulation both given to and received with STD protection

11. Frequencies

12. Principle Component Analysis • Principal components analysis used to identify “clusters” of mutually occurring behaviors • Fondling, 7 behaviors: α = .95 • Oral, 5 behaviors: α = .86 • Solitary, 5 behaviors: α = .76 • Inter w/ pro, 2 behaviors: α = .85 • Inter w/o pro, 2 behaviors: α = .70 • Ran Linear Regression to find the impact of the 4 factors on these groups of behaviors

13. Standardized Regression Coefficients (β) *p<.05

14. Possible Limitations • Unsure about causal relationships since our approach was correlational • Perceived acceptance  participation • Participation  perceived acceptance • Lack of variance within demographic variables: Age, SES, education, and race

15. Future Research • Separate peer group into different factors: Friends vs. Significant Other vs. “Peers” • Now that we see peers are correlated with behavior, it is important to initiate ways to make peers the informants of appropriate sexual education information

17. Behaviors with Significance other than Peers • Masturbation – peers, parents, sex ed. • French-kissing – peers, media (negative), sex ed. classes • Vaginal intercourse without pregnancy prevention – peers, parents, media (negative) • Vaginal intercourse without STD prevention – peers, parents • Anal intercourse received from another person with a condom – peers, media (negative) • Cyber sex (talking dirty to someone online) – peers, parents, media (negative), sex ed. classes • Phone sex ( talking dirty to someone over the phone) – peers, sex ed. classes • Dressing with intent to attract sexual attention – peers, media • Viewing pornography – peers, parents, media (negative), sex ed. classes