“Let's Talk About Sex”: Exploring HBCU Student Memorable Message Narratives

Abstract

This article reports on an exploratory study regarding the memorable message narratives that students attending a U.S. southern historically Black college and university (HBCU) shared as most influential in their current sexual practices. A larger national research project was conducted to generate formative data regarding HBCU student's knowledge of human papillomavirus (HPV), their comfort levels discussing sexuality, and the social, sexual, and memorable messages that guide their behaviors, practices, and beliefs regarding sexuality. From this larger data set, the authors focused on 114 narratives provided by participants. Using thematic analysis, this article delineates source-based themes of memorable messages that provide insight into how current sexual beliefs, attitudes, and practices are informed by a variety of socializing agents. Implications for future research, theorizing, and practice are discussed.

KEYTERMS:

• memorable message narratives
• sexuality
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities
• sexual practices

Notes

¹The demographics of our participants in terms of age, gender, and race were fairly comparable to the larger student body of the HBCU where the data was collected.

²This process involved focusing on the essence of memorable messages (rather than the source or impact) and collapsing more specific preliminary themes into more broadly defined categories.

³One example of this involved narratives about sexual abuse and rape. Within the data, these instances, following the thematic guides of repetition and reoccurrence, were not numerically significant enough to be featured as dominant themes. However, the forcefulness of the few narratives that did feature sexual abuse and rape insisted their inclusion within larger thematic descriptions.

⁴The following descriptive statistics provide some general insight into the sexual experiences and perceptions of the 114 students who participated in the study. Of the 114 participants, 14% reported never having had vaginal, oral, or anal sex. Overwhelmingly, participants reported feeling comfortable or very comfortable talking about sex with both partners (82%) and friends (83%). When asked about what might make starting a conversation with a partner or potential partner about safer sex “tough,” 64% of participants reported that it would not be difficult at all. Of the remaining participants, 18% said that it would be tough because they worried about their partner's reaction.