RELIGIOSITY AND REFERENCE GROUPS: TOWARDS A MODEL OF ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY (RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION, PEERS)

471 Freshmen attending colleges affiliated with a conservative religious denomination completed a questionnaire relating to their premarital sexual behavior. The questionnaire was designed on the basis of a proposed model of adolescent sexuality, and drew heavily from questionnaires published in the literature. Not only were questions on sexual behavior asked, but information on the adolescents\u27 religious behaviors and orientation, and the sexual and religious behaviors of parents and friends was also requested. The results indicated that: (1) This sample was more religious and less sexually active than any other college sample reported in recent literature; (2) Many variables correlated with premarital sexual behavior in the literature were replicated in the present research, although (because these variables were viewed not singly but as part of matrix) the comparative importance of certain variables had to be reassessed. What resulted was a greater respect for the influence of peer variables, a growing understanding of the impact of religious variables, and another confirmation of the weakness of parental variables in regard to the sexual behavior of adolescents; (3) New relationships were explored and established in this study. Religious orientation and peer religious behavior were correlated with adolescents\u27 sexual behaviors, both of which constitute new and theoretically important findings. Finally, the model which was proposed constitutes the most important contribution of the study, not only summarizing many of the variables found to be most strongly related to premarital sexual behavior by the literature, but embedding them within a matrix that allows their comparative importance to be assessed. The greatest weakness in this field of inquiry (as identified by many of its most prominent researchers) is the lack of a theoretical basis that provides the student not simply with data but with understanding. This research was as much an attempt to organize as it was to collect data, to the end that a more comprehensive picture of this important social issue might emerge