Communicating about sex when it matters: a content analytic investigation of sexual health information on college student health center websites^†

† A version of this manuscript has been presented at the 68th Annual International Communication Association conference, Prague, Czech Republic, held May 2018.

ABSTRACT

Young adults struggle to achieve sexual health. Student health centers (SHCs) are uniquely positioned to provide young adults with credible and complete sexual health information. Using the comprehensive model of information seeking for theoretical guidance, we conducted a content analysis to examine the credibility and completeness of sexual health information available to young adults through SHC websites at 400 randomly selected U.S. colleges/universities. Unfortunately, most SHC websites do not provide complete sexual health information, which may decrease the credibility of SHCs as a source of sexual health information for young adults. Topics related to sexual health predominantly focused on prevention and risk topics (i.e. sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, and pregnancy). We offer practical suggestions for SHC webpages to align their sexual health information content with the American College Health Association standards of practice and point to a scholarly focus on content characteristics and information availability to complement information seeking studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual health
• content analysis
• student health centers
• information availability
• comprehensive model of information seeking

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Stephen A. Rains for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Samantha J. Stanley http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7501-8182

Kun Yan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8549-9589

Jian Jiao http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1058-8026

Margaret Jane Pitts http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-400X

Notes

† A version of this manuscript has been presented at the 68th Annual International Communication Association conference, Prague, Czech Republic, held May 2018.

1 We excluded commuter campuses because we reasoned that the students at these institutions would be less reliant on SHCs for their healthcare.

2 HPV was coded separately from other STDs because it can be prevented through vaccination, and the vaccine is available to college-aged men and women.

3 We do not report the depth of sexual health mentions because given their nature, we would not expect much depth. Thus, there was very little variance in depth in sexual health mentions.