Developing Respondent-Based Multi-Media Measures of Exposure to Sexual Content

Abstract

Despite interest in media effects on sexual behavior, there is no single method for assessing exposure to sexual content in media. This paper discusses the development of sexual content exposure measures based on adolescent respondents' sexual content ratings of titles in television, music, magazines, and video games. We assessed the construct and criterion validity of these exposure measures by examining their relationship to one another and to adolescents' sexual activity. Data were collected through a web-based survey using a quota sample of 547 youth aged 14–16 from the Philadelphia area. Adolescents rated their frequency of exposure to specific media titles and the sexual content of each title. Sexual behavior was measured using an ordered index of lifetime pre-coital and coital sexual activity. The association between exposure to sexual content and sexual activity varied by medium and measure. Based on our findings we recommend using a multiple media weighted sum measure.

The project described was supported by Grant Number 5RO1HD044136 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NICHD. The authors would also like to acknowledge Aaron Smith-McLallen and Elisabeth Davis for their contributions to this manuscript.

Notes

¹A variation of this method is to include the length of the media title (e.g., in increments of 30 minutes) in the product term (Brown & Newcomer, 1991). How the length of the title is weighted also varies depending upon whether more than one type of media is included in the analysis. If more than one medium is included, recent approaches to “unitizing” the media involve identifying units of analysis within each medium that are assumed to be equivalent such that they will have equal weight across media. Thus for example, a lyric line in a song is assumed to be equivalent to a non-break sequence in a movie or television show (Brown et al., 2006).

² It is worth noting that if frequency of exposure to a given title is not important, the problems of unitizing to develop cross media measures becomes much less problematic.

³The mean correlation is a simple mean and is not based on r to z transformations.