Individual changes in sexual attitudes and behavior within college‐level human sexuality courses

A sample of 172 university students enrolled in three human sexuality courses was utilized to explore attitudinal and behavioral changes in individual students, rather than for the class as a whole. Students responded to a questionnaire on the first and last day of the course. ANOVAS indicated that sexual attitudes became more permissive during the period of the course and that there were no significant changes in behavior for the students as a group, a finding consistent with previous research. Attitude and behavior change scores were computed for each student, and multiple regressions were employed to test the relative association with a series of predictor variables. As predicted, attitude changes were associated with membership in social groups with restrictive sexual norms, personally restrictive sexual attitudes, and low prior sexual experience. Behavior changes were more complex with differing sets of variables explaining change in conventional and unconventional sexual behaviors. The report closes with a consideration of potential areas of future research.

Key words:

• Sex education
• sexual attitudes
• sexual behavior
• permissiveness
• prior experience
• sexual norms