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Consider the following
abstract from PsycInfo: TITLE:
Risk estimation and sexual behaviour: A longitudinal study of 16-21-year-olds. AUTHOR:
Breakwell,-Glynis-M. FIRST
AUTHOR AFFILIATION: U SOURCE:
Journal-of-Health-Psychology. 1996 Jan; Vol 1(1):
79-91 ABSTRACT:
Examined the relationships among risk estimation, impulsivity and patterns of
sexual risk-taking in 16-21-yr-olds. A sample of 236 males and 340 females
completed a postal questionnaire on three occasions at annual intervals. They
reported their assessment of their own risk of HIV infection, the risk of HIV
infection associated with six types of sexual activity, their likelihood of engaging
in each of these activities, and whether they had participated in these
activities between the first and second data collections. Impulsivity was
indexed using a standard test. The data support the conclusion
that strong social representations of sexual risks exist which do not
markedly change during late adolescence. These risk estimates predict
behavioural expectations, primarily for the riskiest behaviours, and for
females (actual participation in vaginal sex); but for males, risk estimates
fail to predict behaviour. Evidence here for a rational model of individual
decision-making in relation to sexual risk-taking is sparse. Impulsivity was
not a good predictor of expected or actual patterns of sexual behaviour,
though higher impulsivity was associated with having more sexual partners
and, in females, with starting to have sex younger. KEY
PHRASE: risk estimation, and impulsivity and sexual behavior,
16-21 yr old males and females, 3-yr study MAJOR
DESCRIPTORS: *Impulsiveness-; *Psychosexual-Behavior;
*Sexual-Risk-Taking MINOR
DESCRIPTORS: Adolescent-Development AGE
GROUP: Adolescence; Adulthood; Young-Adulthood POPULATION:
Human; Male; Female PUBLICATION
TYPE: Empirical-Study Call
number: R 726.7 J64 1. Discuss how the central course concepts
(listed below) are applicable to the research described in the abstract 2. Choose one course concept
that applies, and recalling the assumptions that Slife
says accompany that concept, discuss how those assumptions might also apply
to the described research. 3. Imagine alternative ways
of conducting research on these same topics.
What advantages and disadvantages would these alternatives have? Human Images Determinism
and Free Will Psychodynamics Efficient
causation Behaviourism Final
causation (teleology) Humanism Contextual
agency Information Processing (Cognitive) Structuralism Reductionism Postmodernism Material
reduction Mechanical
reduction Ways of Knowing Grounding in
lived experience Empiricism Rationalism Social Construction Being-in-the-World
(hermeneutic) |