Associations between Croatian Adolescents’ Use of Sexually Explicit Material and Risky Sexual Behavior: A Latent Growth Curve Modeling Approach

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this biobehavioral longitudinal study was to assess the association between sexually explicit material (SEM) use and risky sexual behavior among Croatian adolescents (n = 577). Methods: The data were collected over the period of 15 months. Conditional dual-domain latent growth modeling was used. Results: Male adolescents’ initial SEM use, but not subsequent growth, was related to changes in sexual risk taking over the observed period. Among female adolescents, SEM use and sexual risk taking were significantly related only at baseline. Conclusions: Our findings point to gender-specific association between adolescents’ SEM use and risky sexual behavior.

Keywords:

• Adolescents
• pornography
• sexual behavior
• risk-taking
• testosterone
• longitudinal studies

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Human subjects

The Committee on Ethics Issues in Science and Research of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences approved all study procedures, including our consent procedures and the lack of parent/guardian consent for participants older than 14 years of age. The Ethics Issues Confirmation was issued on 2nd of June 2014. Permission was obtained from all participating schools before the participant recruitment began. Informed consent was included at the beginning of each questionnaire.

Notes

1 Participants who reported decreasing or highly inconsistent numbers of lifetime sexual partners in the subsequent waves were excluded from the analyses (n = 23).

2 Both questions had a 4-point scale, ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (often) to record answers. The indicators were dichotomized into 0 (never) and 1 (at least once).

3 This transformation rendered direct comparisons across gender (using multi-group analysis) impossible.

4 Because of the small number of schools (n = 14) in the sample, only nestedness in classes was examined.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by Croatian Science Foundation (project number 9221). Additional funding was provided by the University of Zagreb and the Atlantic Grupa d.d.