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Download fileDating anxiety and sexual intimacy anxiety in young people who harm sexually: a comparative study.
thesis
posted on 2015-05-13, 08:21 authored by Deborah EagleThe present research aimed to address two questions. First, is dating
anxiety associated with sexual intimacy anxiety? Second, do young people
who report harmful sexual behaviour, as an offence or harmful dating
behaviour, have higher levels of dating and sexual intimacy anxiety than
young people who report no harm, non-sexual harm or sexual and non-sexual
harm (generalists)? The Dating Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (DAS-A) was
used to measure overall dating anxiety. Questions relating DAS-A sub-factors
fear of negative evaluation and social distress - dating were amended to
measure sexual intimacy anxiety. A scale to measure partnership anxiety and
sexual behaviour anxiety were designed. Participants were 77 young people
aged 13 to 18 years (M = 15.4, SD = 1.41). Forty-five (58%) of participants
were female and 32 (42%) participants were male.
Results found a strong, significant association between higher levels of
dating anxiety and higher levels of sexual intimacy anxiety r(75) = .80, p <
.001. Young people who reported a sexual offence had significantly higher
sexual behaviour anxiety than non-sexual offence (M = 15.82, SD = 6.23, p =
.005) and generalist offence groups (M = 21.77, SD = 6.53, p = .044). Despite
no other significant differences, a pattern emerged that suggests young
people who report harmful sexual or generalist dating behaviour may have
higher dating and sexual intimacy anxieties. Furthermore, young people who
report harmful dating behaviour may have higher anxieties than young people
who report an offence. The implications of the findings for future harmful
sexual behaviour and harmful dating behaviour research and practice are
discussed.
Funding
None
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
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© Deborah EaglePublisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2015Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.Language
- en
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Keywords
Dating anxietySexual intimacy anxietySexual behaviour anxietyPartnership anxietyHarmful sexual behaviourHarmful dating behaviourHealthy dating developmentHealthy sexual developmentYoung peopleGeneralistsComparativeInter-disciplinaryIntegrated theoryMulti-factorialMulti-agencyPracticeOffenceIntimate partner violenceLanguage, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classifiedStudies in Human Society not elsewhere classified