Initiation of Intercourse: Overall Influences

Initiation of Intercourse: Overall Influences At the follow-up interview, 28% of young men reported having initiated intercourse within a year of the first survey. In general, involvement in risky behaviors and precoital sexual activity increased the likelihood of first sex (odds ratios, 1.4 and 1.3, respectively—Table 3). The more approving that young men were of premarital sex, the more likely they were to have first sex (1.8), and the more that they disagreed with traditional gender roles, the less likely first sex was to occur (0.4). Surprisingly, parental influence and family rules increased the odds of initiating intercourse (1.5 for each); these factors were not strongly correlated with each other (r=.19), so multicollinearity is not an issue. Increasing family income raised the odds of sexual initiation (1.3). Achieving higher grades in school decreased the odds of first sex (0.6), as did repeating a grade (0.4). The odds of sexual initiation increased with age (1.4), but living with both parents at age 14 reduced the odds (0.4). Having a mother who gave birth as a teenager or who was educated below high school increased the odds of first sex (2.0 and 2.5, respectively). The factors included in the model accounted for 27% of the variation in sexual initiation for the full sample. sion models, we examined interaction terms to determine whether effects differed significantly between delayers and anticipators. Each independent variable was interacted with a dichotomous variable (coded one if the respondent was an anticipator and zero if he was a delayer), and the interaction term and the anticipation measure were included in the full model. All analyses were conducted with SPSS version 10.0.