College Student Attitudes toward Pornography Use.

Data from 305 confidential anonymous 50-item questionnaires on pornography were completed by students at East Carolina University and analyzed to provide the basis for this study. Over 90 percent (92.4%) reported ever having looked at pornography with over forty percent (43.1%) reporting doing so between one and two times a week. Significant gender differences included that men viewed pornography more than women, that men approved of pornography more than women, that women who viewed pornography were viewed as "loose," that women were more threatened by pornography than men and that women were more likely to agree that looking at pornography was OK if one was not fantasizing about others while doing so. Limitations and implications of the data are suggested. ********** Pornography (defined here as sexually explicit material designed to arouse) permeates American society. Examples of the pervasiveness of pornography include pornographic magazines at the local 7-11, X rated videos in the back room of neighborhood video stores as well as sex toy "novelty" shops, cable TV (Cinemax has been dubbed "Skinamax"), and unlimited pornographic downloads from the Internet. Recent research on pornography has included demographic factors associated with using pornography (Stack, Wassermann, and Kern, 2004), definitions of online infidelity (Whitty, 2003), and the effect of pornography use by one's partner on one's self concept and intimate relationship (Bridges, 2003; Parker and Wampler, 2003; Schneider, 2000). This study examined gender differences in viewing pornography and attitudes about doing so among a sample of college students. Methodology A fifty-item questionnaire was developed and subsequently approved by the Institutional Review Board at East Carolina University. To assess attitudes, the respondents were asked to indicate their beliefs (e.g. "Women are against pornography because they feel threatened by it") about pornography on a Likert scale from "strongly disagree" (1), to "disagree" (2 ), to "agree" (4), to "strongly agree" (5). The category of "neither agree nor disagree" response was removed from the analysis with the difference of means tests utilized to identify significant differences. Chi square tests were also confirmatory and resulted in the same outcomes when comparative levels of measurement were used. Sample A nonrandom sample of 318 undergraduates at East Carolina University "completed" the questionnaire anonymously (the researcher was not in the room when the questionnaire was completed and no identifying information or codes allowed the researcher to know the identity of the respondents). The term "completed" is in quotation marks since some did not respond to all questions. The result was 305 usable questionnaires on which the data analysis was conducted. Among the respondents in the usable sample, 58.7% were women; 41.3% were men. Their ages ranged from 18 to 45 with a median age of 20. Ninety-seven percent reported that they were heterosexual. In regard to current relationship, about half (49%) were not dating anyone or dating different people casually and about half (51%) were emotionally committed or involved. Three-quarters (74.5%) reported that they were sexually active with 38% reporting intercourse once or twice a week. Regarding pornography use, 92.4% reported ever having looked at pornography with 7.6% reporting that they had never done so. In terms of frequency, over forty percent (43.1%) reported looking at pornography between one and two times a week. The most frequent type of pornography the respondents reported viewing was over the Internet (45.5%) followed by rented video (24.5%), TV (21.4%), and magazines (8.6%). In terms of being conservative/liberal, the sample split (almost 50/50 exactly). Regarding religion, 70% saw themselves as religious with 30% seeing themselves as not very religious or not religious at all. …