A Mixed-Method Analysis of Women’s Attributions about Their Partner’s Pornography Use

ABSTRACT

We used a mixed-method design to examine the attributions women in mixed-gender/sex relationships make for their partner’s perceived pornography use and whether such attributions covary with women’s relationship and sexual satisfaction. A final sample of 199 women completed measures of relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and their perceptions of partner’s pornography use. Participants also completed three open-ended questions assessing their attributions of their partner’s perceived pornography use. Qualitative analyses revealed 11 themes in women’s attributions of their partner’s perceived pornography use; some of the themes reflected on women themselves (e.g., being open-minded and accepting), whereas other themes reflected on the partner (e.g., partner is sexually bored) or the relationship (e.g., strong and trusting relationship). Furthermore, the women made positive, negative, and neutral attributions. Quantitative analyses showed that positive attributions were significantly more frequent than neutral or negative attributions and the latter two categories did not differ significantly from each other. Also, greater frequency of positive and neutral attributions and lower frequency of negative attributions were associated with higher relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. Our results suggest that women make a range of attributions about their partner’s pornography use and that this variation relates meaningfully to indices of relationship functioning.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ In keeping with the recommendation of Hyde et al. (2019), based on Yoder (2003), we have adopted the term gender/sex rather than either sex or gender in this manuscript given that we cannot separate the biological and socially constructed effects.

² Supplemental analyses were conducted to assess whether findings changed after controlling for demographic effects. This was accomplished by including ethnicity, relationship type, employment status, and education as covariates in the GEE analyses. Associations were slightly attenuated, but the direction and statistical significance of the coefficients were unchanged.

³ We reanalyzed the data excluding participants who responded “no” to the question, “To your knowledge, has your partner ever used pornography since you and he/she have been together. We are not asking about your partner’s pornography use in the past, but rather while in the current relationship with you”. The pattern of results for the quantitative analyses remained the same when we excluded these participants from the analyses. We excluded these participants because they are a conceptually distinct group; these participants were excluded in response to feedback received during the peer-review process.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to Uzma Rehman.