Opportune Romance: How College Campuses Shape Students’ Hookups, Dates, and Relationships

ABSTRACT

By merging Online College Social Life Survey data from heterosexual students at 21 U.S. colleges and universities (N = 17,897) with campus-level data, this article examines the effects of student body size, density, and racial composition on students’ hookups, dates, and committed relationships. We examine relationship frequency, whether the most recent of each relationship type occurred with a fellow student, and the effects of racial composition by student race and gender. We find that students at schools with the largest, versus smallest, student body sizes have higher rates of hookups and dates, but are less likely to partner with one another. The percent of white undergraduate students is negatively associated with the number of hookups for white and black women, but positively associated with the number of hookups for Asian women and all Hispanic students, men and women.

KEYWORDS:

• Hooking up
• dating
• relationships
• sexuality
• college

Acknowledgments

Authors are listed alphabetically and were equal contributors.

Notes

1. Following the example of Adkins et al. (2015), zero-inflated negative binomial regression models predicting hookup and date frequency treated all responses of ‘15 or more’ as 15. Alternative models coding this top frequency category as 24 (15 × 1.6) did not result in substantially different coefficients.

2. We considered the possibility of selection, or that students are drawn to schools due to the same factors that shape their prospects for intimate relationships. While the size, density, or racial composition of student bodies are unlikely to be direct determinants of students’ college choices, they may be reflected in the perceptions of campus culture that shape application and enrollment decisions. To account for selection, we control for individual- and campus-level variables. Like Uecker and Regenerus (2010), we also tested for selection by examining whether students’ attitudes towards relationships varied by campus characteristics. Students were asked their opinion on the statement, “If I met the right person now, I’d like to be in an exclusive relationship.” Response options included, “Yes, very much so,” “Yes, I think so,” “I already am in an exclusive relationship,” and “No, I would not.” Our analyses excluded individuals who reported currently being in a committed relationship. We first ran ordered logit regression models on the three-category ordinal variable, but Brant tests showed that the models violated the parallel regressions assumption of ordered logit regression. Multinomial logit regression models among single students in our sample showed that some campus-level independent variables are significant predictors of attitudes towards committed relationships, evidence of possible selection into schools. Yet these results may not indicate selection if experiences during college alter students’ attitudes. Significant interaction terms between student body size, the percent of students in campus-owned housing, and student year in school show that the influence of campuses on attitudes towards relationships varies somewhat by the time spent on campus. These models are available as supplemental online material.