Factors Leading to Adolescent Sexual Permissiveness

Erica Berck, RHS ‘07

Past research has documented high rates of adolescent sexual promiscuity leading to pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. This study explored the contributing factors towards this trend. It was hypothesized that adolescent sexual promiscuity would be predicted by a distant relationship with parents, religious detachment, sexually permissive peers, and that males would be more promiscuous than females. Sixty-eight high school participants were surveyed. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that the model accounted for a total of 49.3% of the variance in the students’ promiscuity. It was found that peer attitudes were the best predictor of participants’ sexual attitudes. In addition, a distant relationship to one’s father was found to be a better predictor of permissive sexual attitudes than a distant relationship with one’s mother. The implications of these findings are discussed.