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Article Excerpt
Knowing why adolescents and young adults have sex is critical to understanding their sexual behavior. As suggested by Cooper and colleagues (Cooper, Shapiro, & Powers, 1998), two behaviors that appear to be the same should be considered different if they are performed to satisfy distinct psychological purposes. Research in youth and adults has shown that different types of reasons for sex are associated with a greater or lesser likelihood of sexual risk. For example, having sex for enhancement (pleasure) motives has been linked to sexual behaviors that increase the risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) or pregnancy or both, including earlier age at first intercourse, greater sexual frequency, more sexual partners, more high-risk behaviors (e.g., one-night stands, sex with a stranger), more unplanned pregnancies, and more STIs (Cooper et al., 1998). Having sex for intimacy reasons, however, also has been associated with more frequent sex (Cooper et al., 1998; Browning, Hatfield, Kessler, & Levine, 2000; Katz, Fortenberry, Zimet, Blythe, & Orr, 2000) and less frequent or less consistent condom use (Cooper et al., 1998; Katz et al., 2000), although British teenagers who reported intimacy reasons for sex were more likely to have discussed contraceptive use before first intercourse (female youth) and to have used contraception with first intercourse (male youth; Stone & Ingham, 2002).
Differences in associations between reasons for sex and sexual behaviors that increase risk may be due to the different study populations or measures used to assess respondents' reasons for sex. Previous studies' participants ranged from high school students (Stone & Ingham, 2002), to adolescents presenting to a medical clinic for STI treatment (Katz et al., 2000), to college undergraduates who currently were dating someone (Browning et al., 2000). Reasons for having sex were assessed by asking how important each listed reason was in the respondents' sexual relations (Browning et al., 2000), how often they personally had sex for each of a list of reasons (Cooper et al., 1998), which reasons they endorsed for sex with each of their four most recent partners (Katz et al., 2000), or for which reasons they had sexual intercourse for the first time (Stone & Ingham, 2002). Furthermore, partner type may explain some of the differences among the studies' findings. For example, Cooper et al. (1998) found that among young adults (mean age 21.5 years), those who were in an exclusive relationship indicated the highest level of intimacy reasons for sex, which were related to more frequent sexual intercourse and to less frequent condom use.
Previous studies have indicated that at least four factors may contribute to differences in why adolescents and young adults have sex. First, sex-role stereotypes suggest that men are more likely than women to cite pleasure (Browning et al., 2000; Leigh, 1989; Meston & Buss, 2007) and arousal (Eyre & Millstein, 1999; Meston & Buss, 2007; Woody, D'Souza, & Russel, 2003) reasons and women are more likely than men to cite love/intimacy reasons for sex (Brigman & Knox, 1992; Browning et al., 2000; Meston & Buss, 2007; Randolph & Winstead, 1988). These gender differences, however, have not been consistently observed (Cooper et al., 1998; Ozer, Dolcini, & Harper, 2003).
Second, age has been associated with different reasons for having sex. Consistent with the need to establish intimate relationships as part of healthy adolescent development (Weinstein & Rosen, 1991), intimacy motives tend to be endorsed more by young adults (i.e., 21 years and older) as compared with adolescents, as seen in a community sample of sexually experienced young people (Cooper et al., 1998). Similarly, a longitudinal study of female adolescent clinic patients found that girls who were 17 or older at first coitus were more likely than younger girls to report being in love and feeling romantic as reasons for sex (Rosenthal et al., 2001).
Third, as noted earlier, relationship status may explain differences in reasons for having sex. Compared with peers in other kinds of relationships, young adults in exclusive relationships report the highest level of intimacy-related reasons and the lowest levels of coping, partner approval, and peer approval reasons for sex (Cooper et al., 1998).
Fourth, motivational models of risk behavior suggest that individuals are motivated to engage in the behavior to enhance positive affect or reduce negative affect (Cooper et al., 1998; Cooper, Agocha, & Sheldon, 2000; Wills & Hirky, 1996; Wills, Sandy, Shinar, & Yaeger, 1999). Studies in adolescents who engage in smoking and drug and alcohol use have found that coping or avoidance motives predict sexual activity, as well as their substance use (Caffrey & Scheider, 2000). In a community sample of adolescents, having sex to cope with negative emotions was associated with having multiple sexual partners and having sex to please or appease one's partner was linked to using less effective forms of birth control and having more unplanned pregnancies (Cooper et al., 1998). Other research in adolescents and young adults supports the notion that negative affect is associated with increased sexual risk behavior (e.g., condom nonuse) and outcomes (e.g., STIs; Erbelding, Hummel, Hogan, & Zenilman, 2001; Shrier, Harris, & Beardslee, 2002; Shrier, Harris, Sternberg, & Beardslee, 2001). Thus, youth who are experiencing aversive affective states such as depression and anxiety may engage in sex to cope with or avoid negative affect.
Most previous research has examined possible reasons for sex using a recalled event (e.g., first or last sexual intercourse), in general, or a hypothetical scenario. These approaches, however, are limited by problems with validity and bias, including measurement error, participation bias, respondent influences, and interviewer bias and effects (Catania, Gibson, Chitwood, & Coates, 1990). Little research has examined adolescents' reason for sexual intercourse at the event level, in which they are asked about a specific episode of sexual intercourse. One approach to measuring such phenomena is momentary sampling, which involves repeated assessments of individuals in their natural environments (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983; Shiffman, 2000). Assessments are cued by an external signal emitted at random intervals using an...
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