SEXUAL CONSENT AMONG COLLEGE MALE: FRATERNITY MEMBERSHIP, MEDIA EFFECTS, AND THE INTEGRATIVE MODEL

Jiayu Li

The media is an important source of sexual information for young people, and exposure to media content influences how young people interpret and behave in sexual situations in real life. The media the youth attend to depicts alcohol use and sexual activities together, however, alcohol use is one of the major risk factors of sexual assaults, and people cannot legally consent to sexual activity when they are intoxicated by alcohol, according to the law in many states. Moreover, the presence of alcohol can also influence college men’s interpretations of sexual consent. Therefore, this study aims to examine if exposure to the co-occurrence of sex and alcohol in the media influences people’s attitudes and beliefs toward the combination of alcohol and sex as well as their intentions to negotiate sexual consent. The first study aims to test the dimensionality and factor structure of existing scales on attitudes and intentions related to sexual consent. Moreover, since fraternity membership has been identified as a risk factor for problematic drinking and sexual assault, this study also tested the measurement invariance between fraternity members and non-fraternity members using the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. The Sexual Consent-related Behaviors Intention scale and Alcohol and Sex Consent scale achieved certain levels of measurement invariance across fraternity membership groups, but Alcohol and Sexual Consent Scale did not pass scalar invariance, implicating that it may contain response bias. The second study used the integrative model of behavioral prediction to test the influence of media exposure, along with attitudes, perceived peer norms, and self-efficacy, on people’s intentions regarding sexual consent negotiation in alcohol-involved situations. Rape myth acceptance and self-efficacy were the most robust predictors of sexual consent intentions. As for the media effects, TV hours were positively associated with intentions to ask for sexual consent and intentions to adhere to sexual consent decisions, and media exposure to specific alcohol and sex content was related to norms and self-efficacy. In addition, fraternity membership had a negative influence on sexual consent intentions through its influence on self-efficacy.

SEXUAL CONSENT AMONG COLLEGE MALE: FRATERNITY MEMBERSHIP, MEDIA EFFECTS, AND THE INTEGRATIVE MODEL

Files and links (1)

Abstract

Metrics

Details