Marcus Monteiro
Prior research indicated that the percentage of adolescents who reported that they had
ever had sex decreased significantly between 1991 and 2007 overall (from 54% to 48%), as well
as among the female, male, white, and black subgroups individually However, further analysis
showed that the downward trend actually ended among males in 1997 and among blacks in 2001.
Moreover, there was no change in this behavior among Hispanic adolescents. (London, 2008)
The purpose of this current study is to further analyze the significance of age when it
comes to sexual knowledge and the distribution of sexual understanding between ethnic groups.
The effect of ethnicity influencing first intercourse has received limited attention in research on
age. This research purposes that ethnicity can be one of the leading factors that influences the
age of exposure to sexual matters. Socioeconomic conditions account for ethnic differences and
cultural influences contribute to the difference between Hispanic, African American and
Caucasians ( David, 1998).
In past research, African Americans were reported to have shown a dramatic progress in
increasing their sexual education (Patricia, 2004). Ironically, in contrast, African American
receives the least amount of sex education. (Maurice, 2011). This is why this research expected
to find a significant difference between African Americans as compared to Hispanics and
Caucasians. The proposed hypothesis is; African American college students learned about sexual
matters at an earlier age, than other ethnic groups. This study will also discuss prior research
4
METHOD
Subjects
The group selected for this research consisted of 30 Long Beach Community College
(LBCC) and Riverside Community College (RCC) students. The subjects were solicited from a
LBCC college psychology class and a Cosmetology class from RCC.
Subjects were asked to complete a survey and were informed that their participation would be
greatly appreciated and that they would receive 1 point of extra credit toward their current
coursework.
Materials
A survey was utilized to conduct this research. (See Appendix A) Participants were
asked to complete the survey which consisted of 20 sex related questions, 10 relevant to age, and
10 relavant to their knowledge of sex related content. The survey also included solicitation of
the participants ethnicity
Procedure
Once all surveys were completed, they were categorized according to ethnicity. These
categories consisted of three groups of ten each group. Group 1 consisted of 10 African
Americans, Group 2 consisted of 10 Caucasians, and Group 3 consisted of 10 Hispanics. The
remaining surveys consisting of other ethnic groups were not included in the research. The
scores for the questions were then calculated for each participants survey by adding all the ages
given for each answer to determine the group means. A higher mean indicated that the
participants of this ethnic group were at an older age when they became knowledgeable of sexual
Maurice, 2011
National Guidelines Task Force and Hispanic/Latino Adaptation Task Force, Guidelines for
Comprehensive Sexuality Education for Hispanic/Latino Youth, 1995,
Patricia, 2004