Assessing the Within-Person Variability of Internal and External Sexual Consent

Figures & data

Table 1. ESM items measuring internal and external sexual consent

	Item Wording	Target Construct
Internal Sexual Consent	1. During these sexual behaviors, I felt erect/vaginally lubricated	Physical response
	2. During these sexual behaviors, I felt comfortable	Safety/comfort
	3. During these sexual behaviors, I felt turned on	Arousal
	4. During these sexual behaviors, the sexual act itself felt consensual	Agreement/want
	5. During these sexual behaviors, I felt ready	Readiness
External Sexual Consent	1. I used straightforward signals to communicate my willingness to engage in these sexual behaviors	Explicit cues
	2. I used subtle signals to communicate my willingness to engage in these sexual behaviors	Implicit cues
	3. I verbally communicated my willingness to engage in these sexual behaviors	Verbal cues
	4. I nonverbally communicated my willingness to engage in these sexual behaviors	Nonverbal cues

These items were designed to assess five types of internal consent feelings and four types of active consent communication. The operational definitions that were used to develop these items are included in Willis, Jozkowski et al. (2021). Participants were provided the operational definitions for these constructs before participating in the study.

Table 2. Intraclass correlation coefficients for internal and external sexual consent

	ICC	95% CI	1 – ICC
Internal Sexual Consent
Physical response	.326	[.254, .396]	.674
Safety/comfort	.444	[.372, .524]	.556
Arousal	.356	[.288, .436]	.644
Agreement/want	.402	[.331, .482]	.598
Readiness	.357	[.289, .437]	.643
External Sexual Consent
Explicit cues	.189	[.136, .256]	.811
Implicit cues	.414	[.344, .495]	.586
Verbal cues	.233	[.175, .305]	.767
Nonverbal cues	.366	[.298, .447]	.634

Each ICC indicates the proportion of variance that can be accounted for by between-person variability. 1 – ICC indicates the proportion of variance that can be accounted for by within-person variability.

Table 3. Fixed effects for the reduced multilevel models predicting internal and external sexual consent (N = 113)

	Internal Sexual Consent				External Sexual Consent
	β	SE	95% CI	p	β	SE	95% CI	p
Intercept	7.66***	.17	[7.33, 7.99]	< .001	4.63***	.22	[4.20, 5.06]	< .001
Type of sexual behavior	.46***	.05	[.37, .55]	< .001	.32***	.09	[.15, .48]	< .001
Internal sexual consent	–	–	–	–	.11*	.06	[.00, .23]	.046

*p < .05. ***p < .001.

Willis, M., Jozkowski, K. N., Bridges, A. J., Davis, R. E., & Veilleux, J. C. (2021). Developing valid and feasible measures of sexual consent for experience sampling methodology. Journal of Sex Research. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.1907526

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