Assessing the Personal Negative Impacts of Hooking Up Experienced by College Students: Gender Differences and Mental Health

Abstract

Hooking up is a normative behavior among college students that is associated with a range of positive and negative consequences. While previous research has primarily focused on women’s negative experiences of hooking up, the current study explored the relationships among hooking up behaviors, psychological distress, and a broad range of negative effects of hooking up in both male and female college students. Using a multisite sample of college students, we developed the 14-item Negative Impact of Hookups Inventory (NIHI) to assess negative health outcomes, emotional responses, and social consequences associated with hooking up. Unprotected sex and having more hookup partners were associated with greater negative experiences of hooking up. Contrary to expectations, there were no gender differences in the total number of negative hookup effects, although men reported more frequent hookups. In addition, negative impacts of hooking up were positively associated with psychological distress regardless of gender. The NIHI may offer a useful tool to assess the negative impacts of hooking up. Understanding students’ hookup experiences is an important step toward developing targeted health interventions related to hooking up behavior in young adult populations.

Notes

¹ In addition to examining whether the data were sufficiently unidimensional for IRT analysis, EFA in a CFA framework was used to explore two-, three-, and four-factor solutions. Overall, the four-factor solution provided the best fit to the data (RMSEA = .027, RMSR = .048, χ²(74) = 106.60, CFI = .99). The first factor, emotional responses, included items assessing regret, embarrassment, and shame (i.e., items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The second factor, health outcomes, assessed problems related to STIs and pregnancy (i.e., items 9, 11, 17). The third factor, social problems, included items related to problems with friends and family (i.e., items, 8, 10, 12, 16). The final factor, isolation, included items related to loneliness and disappointment related to no further contact with a hookup partner (i.e., items 7, 13, 14, 15). Given the small number of items in each subscale and the dichotomous response format, analysis focused on total scores on the NIHI and not the subscales.

² To further examine the criterion validity of the NIHI, a separate sample of 46 college students (54.3% female) completed the NIHI, SARS, and the negative affect scale of the PANAS. As expected, the NIHI total score was significantly, positively associated with the negative personal reactions SARS subscale, r(44) = .59, p < .001, but not the SARS subscales assessing the positive responses of sexual/romantic reactions (e.g., “I have gained more confidence about sex (and related behaviors) based on this hookup”), r(44) = .13, p = .41, or social/academic engagement (e.g., “I have performed better in my classes after this hookup”), r(44) = .22, p = .15. Further, the NIHI was positively associated with the negative affect score of the PANAS, r(43) = .38, p = .01, while scores on the negative reaction scale of the SARS were not significantly related to negative affect, r(43) = .25, p = .10. Scores on both the SARS, r(43) = .46, p = .001, and the NIHI, r(43) = .46, p = .001, were related to number of hookup partners but not frequency of hooking up.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by grants R01AA014576-09 and T32AA007459 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIAAA or the National Institutes of Health.