First-Year College Women's Motivations for Hooking up: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Normative Peer Perceptions and Personal Hookup Participation

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This study used content analysis techniques to explore 221 first-year college women's perceptions of female peers’ reasons (i.e., normative perceptions) for hooking up. Data on personal participation in hooking up were also collected. The well-established Drinking Motives Questionnaire (Cooper, 1994) was used as a framework for coding positive (enhancement or social) and negative (coping or conformity) normative hookup motivations. Participants most commonly indicated that enhancement reasons motivated peers’ hookup behaviors (69.7%). Coping (23.5%), external (21.7%), social (19.5%), and conformity (16.3%) motives were cited less frequently. Furthermore, women who had hooked up since matriculating into college (61.5%, n = 136) were significantly more likely to state that their female peers hook up for enhancement reasons (a positive motive), but they were significantly less likely to perceive that typical female peers hook up for coping or conformity reasons (negative motives) (ps < .001). Findings indicate not only that college women uphold overwhelmingly positive perceptions for peers’ hooking up, but there appears to be a strong relationship between college women's own hooking up participation and the positive versus negative attributions they ascribe to hooking up among their peers. This study extends the understanding of college women's perceptions and potential influences of hooking up and provides implications for harm reduction efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Hooking up
• normative perceptions
• hookup motives
• first-year college women

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Grant R01 AA 012547-06A2 from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; Grant Q184H070017 from the U.S. Department of Education; and a grant from ABMRF/The Foundation for Alcohol Research.

Notes

Event-level studies capture data specific to one event (e.g., behaviors and consequences related to a specific hookup), which enables researchers to causally associate behaviors and consequences directly to a specific event (i.e., hookup).

Cooper (1994) conceptualized these drinking motives as reflecting two dimensions: whether drinking resulted in positive or negative reinforcements and whether those reinforcers were externally or internally derived. Thus, social motives involved external positive reinforcements; enhancement involved internal positive reinforcements; conformity involved external negative reinforcements; and coping involved internal negative reinforcements.