Reference Groups, Religiosity, and Premarital Sexual Behavior

Abstract

477 freshmen attending 8 colleges affiliated with the churches of Christ responded to questions about their own religious and sexual behaviors, as well as those of their parents and two best friends. Four hypotheses, designed to test the relative influence of parents and peers on the behaviors of adolescents, were advanced in this paper. The religious behaviors of parents and peers were found to be related to both the religious and sexual behaviors of adolescents, although peer religiosity completely overshadows parental religiosity in this regard. This is particulary interesting in that peer religious behaviors (to the best of my knowledge) have not been looked at for potential influence on adolescents' sexual behaviors. Parent and peer sexual behaviors and expectations were also significantly related to adolescents' sexual behaviors, but again peers were the more influential reference group. So strong is peer influence in these data, it is argued that parents no longer constitute an effective reference group by the time adolescents reach college. This holds true for this sample in spite of their being highly religious, a finding that seems to contradict the notion that religiosity extends the influence of parents into the college years.