title: Female Sexual Health: The Definition and Development of Sexual Subjectivity, and Linkages with Sexual Agency, Sexual Experience and Well-Being in Late Adolescents and Emerging Adults
Creators: name: Horne, Sharon
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: Sexuality
subject: adolescent sexuality research
subject: sexual subjectivity
subject: sexual agency
subject: psychosocial well-being
subject: sexual exploration

description: Sexuality is an integral part of health and well-being. Despite a 30-year history of adolescent sexuality research, there has been little that has focused on more than risky sexual behaviour. For example, there has been little research on conceptions of sexuality and pathways to sexual health. In part, this is because sexual health has been often defined as the lack of risky behaviour and health problems. In the studies reported here, components of female sexual health were identified and tested, including behaviours and cognitions, among groups of girls in their late teens and early 20s. After a review of the literature, four sets of factors appeared central to identifying female sexual health. These factors included sexual subjectivity, sexual agency, psychosocial well-being and sexual exploration. The first factor, sexual subjectivity, had previously been described as important to female sexual well-being, but had been developed within feminist theories and studied with qualitative methodologies. After a thorough review of the literature, no psychometrically sound measure of sexual subjectivity was found. Therefore, an instrument to assess sexual subjectivity was constructed and validated through a series of studies. Partially as expected, five factors were found - sexual body-esteem, entitlement to sexual pleasure from oneself, entitlement to sexual pleasure from a partner, sexual self-efficacy in achieving sexual pleasure, and sexual self-reflection. In additional cross-sectional and longitudinal (6-month, 2 waves) studies, associations between sexual subjectivity, sexual agency, psychosocial well-being, and sexual experience were examined. The results showed that there were concurrent associations between sexual subjectivity and measures of sexual agency and some measures of psychosocial wellbeing. Results also showed that females with more sexual experience (i.e., experience with sexual intercourse, self-masturbation, noncoital orgasmic responsiveness, and same-sex sexual experience) were relatively higher in sexual subjectivity and sexual agency. However, well-being was similar in sexual experience groups when they were compared. In longitudinal analyses, changes in sexual subjectivity, sexual agency and psychosocial well-being were examined for the whole sample and among subgroups defined by levels of sexual experience. Comparisons were also made between those girls who commenced sexual intercourse during the course of the study, those who remained virgins, and those who were nonvirgins at the first assessment. Main effects generally validated cross-sectional findings. Girls who commenced first sexual intercourse relatively earlier increased in self-esteem over time, compared to their virgin counterparts. Girls who reported a history of self-masturbation and noncoital orgasmic responsiveness, and girls who reported no history with either behaviour, increased in sexual body-esteem and self-esteem over time, but the former group of girls were relatively higher in sexual body-esteem and self-esteem than the latter group of girls. Girls who reported a history of one, but not the other of self-masturbation and noncoital orgasm did not change over time. Results also indicated that girls' transition to first sexual intercourse had little association with sexual subjectivity, but some findings were suggestive of a need for further research. Future research, and study strengths and limitations are discussed. There is a need to examine sexual subjectivity as both an antecedent and an outcome using longer time lags with several waves of assessment so that the linkages between sexual subjectivity and other factors can be determined. The implications of sexual subjectivity and sexual exploration for sexuality education are also discussed.