Media Project
By combining survey data with focus groups and detailed
content analyses of the television programs adolescents
report watching most often, this project explores the potential
influence of television viewing on adolescent sexual behaviors
and attitudes. Two cohorts of adolescents from two diverse
school districts completed pen and paper questionnaires
designed to gather information about their sexual experiences
and their experiences using the media—focusing on
television viewing practices. Using standard coding procedures,
content analyses of television programs popular among the
sample were conducted in order to estimate the amount of
sexual content (behavior and talk) and the types of gendered
messages to which participants were exposed. This is a longitudinal
study designed to follow these adolescents over time, allowing
the investigation of differential developmental effects
of television consumption on sexual outcomes.
Funding: National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Healthy Relationships
The Healthy Relationships study is a research and action
project on adolescent sexuality development and sexual health
that has been supported by the Ford Foundation since its
inception. This longitudinal interview and survey-based
study traces the ways that gender impacts and shapes sexuality
and relationships over the course of adolescence, beginning
in early adolescence (8th grade) through middle adolescence
(10th grade) to later adolescence (12th grade). With this
study, we aim to develop innovative models of adolescent
girls’ and boys’ sexual health premised on the
centrality of gender in sexuality development. Additionally,
we continue to explore potential uses for the model to guide
research, practice and education.
In the last few years, international research has demonstrated
the importance of gender relations, sexism, and conceptions
of appropriate female sexuality and sexual rights to women’s
individual health, the well-being of families, and thus
of society in general. The absence of such a conception
of sexual health in the US has, at the same time, been exacerbated,
in part due to a dearth of scholarship in this area. The
goal of this project is to change public discourse about
what is said to be the sexual health of young women and
young men during the years when mature sexuality is taking
shape. Changing the discourse of what constitutes health
opens the way to transform how we support adolescents. In
particular, the model will offer a new vision for achieving
sexual health more broadly defined.
This project has already provided new insight into the
relationship between young people’s gender and their
sexuality development. In one paper, published in the Journal
of Social Issues we demonstrated how conventional beliefs
about gender and gendered sexuality “sow the seeds
of dating violence” evident in early adolescent girls’
and boys’ descriptions of their experiences. In an
edited volume entitled Adolescent Boys in Context, we offered
a different portrayal of early adolescent boys’ experiences
with sexuality and relationships, in which we present analysis
gleaned from narrative data evidencing boys’ desire
for intimacy, friendship and connection. In it we reveal
the tension between what boys are “supposed”
be like and their actual experiences, and outline the potential
developmental trajectory in which this tension is resolved
in favor of compliance with norms of masculinity. Our most
recent analysis demonstrates the devastating impact of the
requirements of femininity on 8th grade girls’ mental
health. In particular, girls who subscribe to the strictures
of femininity, which require them to objectify their bodies
and silence their beliefs, experience higher levels of depression
and lower self-esteem than their less conventional counterparts.
Funding: The Ford
Foundation
