Presenter: Serena Agterberg − Psychology, Sociology
Faculty Mentor(s): Sanjay Srivastava, Bradley Hughes
(In-Person) Poster Presentation
College is a time when many young adults engage in sexual behavior that may involve physical, psychological, and/or emotional risk. Accurately assessing the ways in which college students are perceiving and engaging in sexual risk taking is an important step in understanding what information needs to be distributed on campuses to eliminate consequences of risk taking. The purpose of this study is to examine college students’ perception of sexual risk taking in their own and others’ behavior. This study will seek to answer the following research questions:
1. What sexual behaviors do college students consider to be “risky”?
2. How do individual differences affect views of and participation in sexual risk taking?
300 participants from the University of Oregon human subjects pool were recruited for this study. Participants were asked to write two narratives describing times in which they, someone close to them, or someone they know participated in sexual behavior that they would consider to be “risky.” Participants then answered questions about personality and were asked for demographic information. The narratives were analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis to identify patterns in the responses. Identifying which behaviors are of concern to college students as well as examining which individual differences relate to attitudes about sexual risk taking will help in the creation and execution of sexual risk reduction strategies.