Sexual experimentation outside of committed romantic relationships, or "hooking up," is portrayed as unhealthy, especially for young women.
Researchers from Syracuse and Brown Universities set out to examine the relationship between young women's health and hooking up more closely; their findings, in "Sexual Hook-ups and Adverse Health Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study of First-Year College Women," are now available in The Journal of Sex Research, the official publication of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and a publication from Routledge.
The study examined the associations between sexual hook-up behaviour and depression, sexual victimization, and sexually transmitted infections. 483 first-year female undergraduate students completed 13 monthly surveys assessing hook-up versus romantic sexual behaviours in relation to depression, sexual victimization, as well as self-reported and biologically-confirmed STIs.
Researchers found that early college hook-up behaviour was associated with sexual victimization and depression, but did not predict future depression. Hook-up sex and romantic sex were both associated with STIs, and pre-college hook-up behaviour predicted early college experiences of sexual victimization. Overall, the potential negative outcomes associated with hooking up in female college students suggest a need for proactive educational efforts and further research into the nature of these associations.
Sourced from Science Daily
