Complaining is a pervasive and important form of social communication but one whose social communicative functions have yet to be subject to empirical investigation. The present study was the first to examine the role of complaining in everyday social interactions. College students kept diaries of the complaints they made to other people for 3 consecutive days, twice during the semester. Students recorded the complaint, the reason for expressing it, and the response it elicited. Over 75% of all complaints registered were non instrumental in nature, in that they were not directed at changing an existing state of affairs but, rather, were expressed for reasons such as to vent frustration or to solicit sympathy. The most frequent complaints involved specific behaviors of another person. The most frequent response to a complaint was to agree with the complainer's statement. The importance of complaining as a form of social communication is discussed, and a number of hypotheses are generated for future research.

The effects of frequency of intercourse on perceptions of two of the most widely used contraceptive methods, the pill and condom, were assessed in 128 female college students currently involved in a sexual relationship. Intercourse frequency was found to be strongly associated with knowledge of both methods. People experiencing more frequent sexual intercourse were more favourably disposed towards the pill and less towards the condom than people experiencing intercourse less frequently. Implications of these results are discussed.

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