“We talked about our hookups”: A diary study of sexual communication among U.S. college women

Abstract

For many young women, college is a time of major changes in sexual behavior and attitudes, driven in part by their social environment. Yet little is known about how young women actually talk about sex day-to-day. To understand daily sexual communication, 96 U.S. college students who identify as women kept a sexual communication diary for 7 days, generating 1,211 records. A content analysis revealed that women talked about sex an average of 13 times per week. Most conversations were with friends, face-to-face, and mostly about previous sexual encounters, dating, and potential sexual activity. The underlying function of most conversations was exchanging opinions, recapping, and gossiping. Sex appears to be a somewhat regularly discussed topic for college women and a way of socializing and exploring attitudes. The results have important implications for health promotion efforts targeted at college women.

Let’s talk about sex: college students’ attitudes towards Sexuality Education in a Spanish University

“…This finding shows how widespread the presence of sex, sexuality or sexual relations is, whether formally or informally, in our sample. This fact was studied a few years ago in the United Kingdom, when it was observed that female students talked about sex about 13 times a day [29].…”