University students' definitions of having sex, sexual partner, and virginity loss: the influence of participant gender, sexual experience, and contextual factors.(Report)

Abstract: Does everyone mean the same thing when they talk about having sex, losing their virginity, or who they would consider to be a sexual partner? The researchers were interested in (a) determining if students differ in their definitions of these terms; (b) examining the relationship between students' own sexual experience and their labelling of behaviours comprising these terms; and (c) determining whether such factors as orgasm, dating status, the sex of the partner, and the sex of the participant influence their definitions. One hundred fifty-five undergraduate students completed five questionnaires, three of which asked them to indicate whether they would consider a list of hypothetical behaviours as involving having sex, sexual partner, and a loss of virginity, and one of which asked them to indicate whether they had engaged in a list of parallel sexual behaviours with a member of the opposite or same sex. Students reported a broader definition of sexual partner than of having sex and a broader definition of having sex than of virginity loss. Students' definitions were more likely to include scenarios involving a longer dating status, an opposite-sex partner, and the presence of orgasm. Females reported a broader definition of having sex than males and no relationship was found between students' sexual experience and their sexual definitions.

Introduction

What it means to have sex has received increasing amounts of public and research attention in recent years (Bogart, Cecil, Wagstaff, Pinkerton, & Abramson, 2000; Randall & Byers, 2003; Sanders & Reinisch, 1999). Although what it means to have sex is commonly understood as involving certain activities both in research and in everyday discourse, its meaning is often either implicitly assumed or inconsistently defined. Definitions in English and law dictionaries most often equate terms such as sex, sexual relation, and sexual act or criminal terms involving having sex such as rape, adultery, and statutory rape with sexual intercourse or, more specifically, with penetration of a vagina by a penis (Barber, 2005; Garner, 2004; UP Cambridge, 2005). Behaviours that involve genital contact other then penile-vaginal penetration are rarely included in these definitions, nor are non-penetrative behaviours that involve touching or oral contact with the genitals. This narrow definition of what constitutes having sex is in stark contrast with the popularized and assumed view within North American culture that behaviours other than penile-vaginal intercourse are included in colloquial definitions. This is evident in the commonly used terms of oral sex and anal sex to denote oral-genital contact and penile-anal penetration, respectively (Wilson & Medora, 1990).

Ambiguity surrounding the definition of having sex can also be found in the literature, in which researchers either define it exclusively as penile-vaginal intercourse or use an unspecified definition that is assumed to be shared by all respondents (Pitts & Rahman, 2001). Recent research shows that this ambiguity toward sexual terminology may also be present in the general population of Western society, especially within the younger community. University students have been found to hold different behavioural criteria for labelling an interaction as involving having sex and to vary their definitions according to contextual factors (Bogart et al., 2000; Carpenter, 2001; Sanders & Reinisch, 1999). This variability toward sexual definitions is further complicated by research that shows young people may also vary in their definition of other sexual terms such as sexual partner, virginity loss, and unfaithfulness (Carpenter, 2001; Cecil, Bogart, Wagstaff, Pinkerton, & Abramson, 2002; Randall & Byers, 2003).

Although most students agree that penile-vaginal penetration is a form of having sex, they often disagree about the inclusion of other sexual behaviours in their classifications. For example, although between 75 percent and 90 percent of students include penile-anal penetration in their definition of having sex, only about 25 percent to 50 percent of students include oral-genital contact (Bogart et al., 2000; Pitts & Rahman, 2001; Randall & Byers, 2003; Sanders & Reinisch, 1999).

Many youth do not include oral-genital contact or penile-anal penetration in their definition of sexual partner (Cecil et al., 2002; Randall & Byers, 2003). This may lead young people to believe that their behaviour is not placing them at risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections (STI), despite the association between number of sexual partners where oral and anal contact occurs and increased infection rates (Hearst & Hulley, 1988; Pinkerton & Abramson, 1998).

Randall and Byers (2003) asked students to provide their own definitions of having sex and sexual partner from a list of 18 sexual behaviours. A larger proportion of participants included penile-vaginal, penile-anal, and genital-oral contact in their definition of sexual partner than of having sex, with the greatest difference being between students inclusion of oral-genital contact in their definition of the two terms (i.e., having sex: 21% vs. sexual partner: 65%). Similarly, although very few students included genital touching or masturbatory behaviours in their definition of having sex, respectively over half and over one-third of students included these two behaviours in their definition of sexual partner. Overall, students were found to include a greater number of behaviours in their definition of sexual partner than of having sex.