Sexual compulsivity among heterosexual college students

Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 2004 by Brian Dodge, Michael Reece, Sara L. Cole, Theo G.M. Sandfort

METHODS

Procedure

In January 2002, a sample of 899 college students ages 18 years or older completed a questionnaire in introductory health science classes at a large, public university in the Midwestern United States. All classes used for recruitment were general elective courses that attracted a diverse cross-section of male and female college students. Coinvestigators at a university independent of where the data collection took place later analyzed the data. The study protocol materials were approved by the institutional review boards of Indiana University-Bloomington and the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry.

During the data collection process, a research assistant briefly described the survey and asked students to participate. Participants were told the study would investigate sexual attitudes and behaviors among college students. Participants completed questionnaires anonymously and placed them in a box in the front of the classroom when finished. We provided no incentives. Of the students who were enrolled in and attended the classes during data collection, a total of 94% responded to the survey (n = 899).

Measures

We constructed a survey for the purposes of data collection to assess a wide variety of sexuality-related variables. No identifying information, with the exception of broad demographic characteristics, was collected. We organized the variables in the following domains.

Demographics. Participants provided information related to their age, class standing, size of hometown, and relationship status, as well as their gender, sexual orientation or identity, and ethnicity.

Sexual compulsivity. We measured sexual compulsivity using the Sexual Compulsivity Scale (Kalichman & Rompa, 1995: see Table 1). Mean scores are based on responses to the 10-item scale, with a possible range from 1 to 4.

Sexual behaviors. Survey items measured participants" frequencies of various sexual activities with men and women, as well as numbers of male and female sex partners, in the past 3 months. We asked participants to report how many times and with how many partners they had engaged in a wide variety of sexual activities. The following subscales were created from individual variables to represent the frequency and variety of sexual activities: partner sex activities (kissing, fingering, rimming, mutual masturbation, vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, and oral interaction): solo sex activities (masturbation alone with toys, with sexually explicit videos, with sexually explicit computer images, with magazines, with an on-line computer partner, and with a phone partner): and public sex activities (sexual activity in a campus restroom, other public restroom, public park, car, locker-room, sauna, or other public or semipublic venue). We chose to examine public sex behaviors among heterosexual college students since previous studies have suggested that sexual compulsivity may be related to public sex but have only examined the phenomenon among MSM who engage in sex in public and commercial sex environments (Benotsch et al., 1999: Reece & Dodge, 2004a, 2004b: Reece & Dodge, 2003). Higher scores on each subscale represent a greater frequency of participation in the various sexual activities and, in the case of partner sex and public sex, with a greater number of sexual partners. We determined reliability of the sexual behavior subscales to be acceptable for partner sex ([alpha] = .76), solo sex ([alpha] = .73), and public sex ([alpha] = .68).