Abstinence Memorable Message Narratives: A New Exploratory Research Study Into Young Adult Sexual Narratives (original) (raw)
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Using a narrative to spark safer sex communication
Health Education Journal
Objective: College students are a group at risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs). While they are generally well informed about STIs, they do not consistently use condoms. An important element in preventing STIs is safer sex communication, especially with a sexual partner. This may be difficult, however, because of a lack of experience in talking about safer sex or because of the absence of suitable role models. In this study, a narrative intervention was tested that was developed to provide receivers with a social script for safer sex communication. Design: An experiment was conducted among college students (N = 225) who were exposed to either a narrative intervention or a non-narrative (brochure) intervention, followed by a post-test questionnaire. In the narrative condition, part of the participants completed a pre-test questionnaire before being exposed to the intervention. Results: Compared to pre-test scores, the narrative positively influenced safer sex communication intentions. The results show no significant differences between post-test scores of the narrative and the nonnarrative condition. Mediation analyses showed that narrative processes (identification and transportation) were positively related to safer sex communication. Conclusion: In this study, we investigated both the effects of a narrative intervention on safer sex communication intentions, and the mechanisms of narrative processing underlying these effects. The narrative turned out to be as effective as a brochure version with the same information. Our mediation analyses suggest that narratives can be made more persuasive by increasing the reader's involvement with the story as a whole, and with one of the characters in particular.
Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 2018
Introduction: The article analyses the effect of narrative persuasion and media literacy level on attitudes, knowledge, perceptions and behavioural intention in the reception of a short video created to prevent teenage pregnancy. Methods: 220 teenage girls participated in an experiment in which they answered a pre-test questionnaire measuring their critical skill to perceive sexualised content in the media as well as dependent variables. A month later, participants were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions: half of them watched a narrative video in testimonial format and the other half watched a narrative video in dialogic format. Afterwards, female participants filled out the post-test questionnaire. Results: The level of media literacy moderated the indirect effects of the testimonial narrative video on the perception of the risks of experiencing negative situations during teenage pregnancy. Conclusions: Results are discussed as an advance in the understanding of the processes of narrative persuasion in health.
Personal Narrative as a Medium for STD/HIV Intervention: A Preliminary Study1
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2003
ABSTRACT Few brief interventions have been successful at producing changes in STD and HIV risk behavior. This preliminary study evaluated the effectiveness of 2 brief interventions designed to promote safer sex. Participants were 93 students enrolled in a health education course at a large midwestern university who watched a 40-min slide presentation including behavioral-skills training, a 40-min personal narrative performance followed by behavioral-skills training, or no presentation. Two weeks later, students completed measures of safer-sex attitudes, motivation, behavioral intentions, behavioral skills, self-efficacy, and decisional balance. Students in the personal narrative group scored higher on the behavioral-skills measure than did students in the slide group or the control group. Personal narrative may be an effective medium for brief safer-sex interventions.
Pro Domo Sua: Narratives of Sexual Abstinence
Sexuality & Culture , 2021
Sexual abstinence is generally interpreted as a health-promotion practice, in particular to avoid HIV/AIDS risk and unwanted pregnancy and parenthood. This paper offers insight into narratives and interactional fantasizing that challenge common conceptions of sexual abstinence. The data come from several interviews and group discussions conducted in a netnographic context, altogether involving 21 European, middle-and upper-middle-class women who have never engaged in sexual intercourse or who are sexually experienced but have discontinued sexual practices for some reason. The women's narratives and interactional fantasizing about sexual abstinence can reveal positive societal effects such as opposing sexualisation of culture and pressure for sex, but also more individual perspectives such as promoting self-esteem, psycho-physical well-being, work productivity and career prospects. Narratives and interactional fantasizing seem to play an important role in examining how sexual abstinence can impact society, especially people's perception of sexuality and gender roles.
This study explores how the memorable messages we receive and those we do not receive complicate the negotiation of sexual health and well-being among women and gender minorities. These powerful accounts reveal the tensions women and gender minorities experience managing what they were told about their sexual identity and sexual health by their parents and educators and those messages they wish they had received instead. Women and gender minorities recall memorable sexual health messages about abstinence, protection, and danger. Their recollections suggest that they want messages that center around positivity, pleasure, and dialogue, and that affirm diverse sexualities and genders. This work emphasizes that for parents and educators especially, what they do not say about sexual health may be just as impactful as what they do say.
This article describes a Narrative Engagement Framework (NEF) for guiding communication-based prevention efforts. This framework suggests that personal narratives have distinctive capabilities in prevention. The article discusses the concept of narrative, links narrative to prevention, and discusses the central role of youth in developing narrative interventions. As illustration, the authors describe how the NEF is applied in the keepin' it REAL adolescent drug prevention curriculum, pose theoretical directions, and offer suggestions for future work in prevention communication.
In this study, we examined young adults’ conversational descriptions of satisfying and unsatisfying sexual conversations with a romantic partner and the relational and sexual outcomes. We coded participants’ responses for content, when and where conversations occurred, and the results of conversations. Most often, conversations occurred in residences at the beginning of relationships and addressed sexual pleasure, relationship issues, sexual health, past sexual experience, attitudes/values, and sexual decision making. The results of conversations included relational consequences such as distrust, anger, understanding, and being afraid to talk to a partner, as well as sexual outcomes such as better sex, condom use, and better sex talk. The findings suggest that the costs and rewards of young adults’ sexual disclosure have implications for the effectiveness of sexual communication.
“Let's Talk About Sex”: Exploring HBCU Student Memorable Message Narratives
Howard Journal of Communications, 2014
This article reports on an exploratory study regarding the memorable message narratives that students attending a U.S. southern historically Black college and university (HBCU) shared as most influential in their current sexual practices. A larger national research project was conducted to generate formative data regarding HBCU student's knowledge of human papillomavirus (HPV), their comfort levels discussing sexuality, and the social, sexual, and memorable messages that guide their behaviors, practices, and beliefs regarding sexuality. From this larger data set, the authors focused on 114 narratives provided by participants. Using thematic analysis, this article delineates source-based themes of memorable messages that provide insight into how current sexual beliefs, attitudes, and practices are informed by a variety of socializing agents. Implications for future research, theorizing, and practice are discussed.
Journal of pediatric and adolescent gynecology, 2017
Little is known about the information shared during family discussions about sexuality. From a public health perspective, abstinence is one of the most important sexuality topics parents can talk with adolescents about. We sought to characterize the messages mothers communicate to young adolescents regarding abstinence. Content analysis of dyadic discussions that occurred between June 2011-December 2012 between mothers and their 10-14 years old adolescent sons and daughters. Discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed, and a grounded theory approach to content analysis performed. Urban city in Western Pennsylvania INTERVENTIONS: None MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: None PARTICIPANTS: 21 dyads - 15 mother-daughter dyads and 6 mother-son dyads RESULTS: Four key themes emerged reflecting the high priority mothers placed on abstinence, delaying their adolescent's sexual debut and nurturing sexual decision making skills. Theme 1 focused on ensuring that adolescents understand what abstinence...
Telling Stories, Saving Lives: Creating Narrative Health Messages
Health Communication, 2014
Increasingly, health communication practitioners are exploring the use of narrative storytelling to convey health information. For this study, a narrative film was produced to provide information about the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer prevention. The storyline centered on Lupita, a young woman recently diagnosed with HPV who informs her family about HPV and the availability of the HPV vaccine for her younger sister. The objective was to examine the roles of identification with characters and narrative involvement (made up of three dimensions: involvement, perceived relevance, and immersion) on perceived response efficacy, perceived severity, and perceived susceptibility to HPV and behavior (discussing the HPV vaccine with a health care provider). A random sample of 450 European American, Mexican American, and African American women between the ages of 25 to 45 living in the Los Angeles area was surveyed by phone before, two weeks after, and six months after viewing the film. The more relevant women found the narrative to their own lives at two weeks, the higher they perceived the severity of the virus and the perceived response efficacy of the vaccine. Also at two weeks, identifying with characters was positively associated with perceived susceptibility to HPV but negatively associated with perceived severity. At six months, identification with specific characters was significantly associated with perceived threat and behavior. These findings suggest that different aspects of narrative health messages should be manipulated depending on the specific beliefs and behaviors being targeted. Implications for narrative message design are discussed.