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Article Excerpt
Studies by Arnett (1994, 1997, 1998, 2000) have provided strong empirical support for emerging adulthood as a developmental period for 18-to-28-year-olds in affluent, industrialized cultures. Distinctly different from those Erikson (1968) labeled young adults, emerging adults have deferred completing the developmental tasks once deemed critical in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Arnett's conceptual revision characterizes emerging adults by their high degree of freedom for identity exploration. Central among their developmental tasks is constructing an ideology of coherent beliefs and values (Arnett, 1997, 1998). In the United States, many of the tasks of emerging adulthood unfold for 62% of high school graduates in the college environment (Lefkowitz, 2005).
Since 1998, motivated by the national discussion about President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinksy, several researchers have attempted to define which behaviors undergraduates consider sex (e.g., Bogart, Cecil, Wagstaff, Pinkerton, & Abramson, 2000; Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2007; Pitts & Rahman, 2001; Randall & Byers, 2003; Richters & Song, 1999; Sanders & Reinisch, 1999). Only two of these studies (Peterson & Muehlenhard; Randall & Byers) have explored whether undergraduates' definitions of sex are consistent across contexts. Randall and Byers sought to determine which sexual behaviors participants associated with the terminology "having sex," "sexual partner," and "unfaithful" Peterson and Muehlenhard (2007) investigated whether undergraduates adjust their definition of having sex based upon "the anticipated consequences of applying a label" (p. 257) to themselves.
The present study of 839 undergraduate emerging adults is the first to investigate if this population would apply a different standard to themselves when labeling a behavior they participate in as having sex than they would apply to their significant other (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife) if the significant other were engaging in the same behavior outside the primary relationship. It was our desire to determine if undergraduate emerging adults' criteria for evaluating a behavior as having sex are objective and context-free or subjective and context bound. If, as Chng and Moore (1994) and Paul, McManus, and Hayes (2000) have asserted, American undergraduates are maturing in sexually permissive environments conducive to sexual activity with multiple or serial partners, the way undergraduate emerging adults label sexual behaviors has important implications for the accuracy of sexual self-disclosure in their dating relationships and for the usefulness of sexual histories taken by health care providers.
Review of Literature
Relevant Emerging Adulthood Literature
Several studies (Arnett, Ramos, & Jensen, 2001; Jensen, 1997a, 1997b) have used Shweder's ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity (Shweder, Much, Mahapastra, & Park, 1997) as a framework to explore emerging adults' development of an ideology or value system. Acting according to the autonomy ethic, a person views himself or herself as the primary moral authority, restricted in decisions only by personal preference. In the ethic of community, commitments to others form a compass for beliefs and values. Acting according to the divinity ethic, the individual sees himself or herself as subject to a higher spiritual or natural order. Undergraduate emerging adults have been found to rely heavily on the ethic of autonomy, significantly less on the ethic of community, and little on the ethic of divinity (Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993; Jensen, 1995).
Several studies have investigated emerging adults' sexual attitudes and behavior in the college environment (Lefkowitz, 2005; Lefkowitz, Boone, & Shearer, 2004; Lefkowitz, Gillen, Shearer, & Boone, 2004), suggesting that the college environment exerts a strong influence on the majority of this population's sexual attitudes and behaviors. According to Lefkowitz (2005), Miller and Moore (1990), and the National Center for Health Statistics (2000), it is the literature's consensus that undergraduate emerging adults are more likely to engage in casual sex than are high school students. In her examination of changes in emerging adults' perceptions of sexuality as they transitioned to a university environment, Lefkowitz (2005) found that at the time of transition, some participants identified universities as environments with sexual climates that depart from those of their earlier life contexts. American society's relaxed views on premarital sex are reflected in American colleges' disengagement in undergraduate life from parental-style oversight (Arnett, 2004; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994).
Literature Examining How Undergraduates Define Sex
Sanders and Reinisch (1999), collecting sexual history data from a random, stratified sample of 599 American undergraduates, asked participants to indicate if their participation in a range of 11 behaviors would constitute having "had sex" (e.g., "Would you say you 'had sex' with someone if the most intimate behavior you engaged in was.... You had oral (mouth) contact with a person's genitals? You touched, fondled, or manually stimulated a person's genitals? A person touched, fondled, or manually stimulated your breasts or nipples?"). The most surprising and widely reported finding was that 60% of the sample did not label their participation in oral-genital contact as sex. Nineteen percent of the sample did not consider their participation in penile anal intercourse sex. For all but two of the 11 behaviors, males were more likely to consider a behavior sex; however, the differences reached significance for only three behaviors: "You touch other's breasts/nip-nipples"; "Oral contact on other's breasts/nipples"; "Person touches your genitals."
Pitts and Rahman (2001) replicated Sanders and Reinisch's (1999) study using a sample of 314 undergraduates in the United Kingdom. Consistent with the U.S. sample, 66% of the U.K. sample did not view oral sex as sex, and 20% did not consider penile-anal intercourse an act that constitutes sex. Similar to the Sanders and Reinisch study, males were significantly more likely than females to consider deep kissing and genital fondling (both for participants fondling and for having their genitals fondled) as sex. Penile-anal intercourse was the only behavior females were significantly more likely than males to consider sex.
Richters and Song (1999), while not replicating Sanders and Reinisch's (1999) study, asked 545 first-year Australian university students to identify which of the following are "having sex": deep kissing, mutual masturbation, oral sex with or without orgasm, and vaginal and anal intercourse with or without ejaculation. Forty-six percent did not consider oral sex without orgasm sex; 42% did not consider oral sex with orgasm sex. Approximately 10% did not consider anal intercourse sex. Older students were more likely to consider nonintercourse activities sex. Men were more likely than women to consider noncoital activities as sex.
Bogart, Cecil, Wagstaff, Pinkerton, and Abramson (2000) sought to determine if undergraduates reading scenarios about hypothetical characters the authors referred to as "actors" (a male and a female undergraduate)...
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