Sexuality among Mexican Americans: a case of sexual stereotyping.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish an empirical base for the comprehensive study of sexual preferences and practices among Mexican Americans. The sample consisted of 165 Mexican-American (86 male, 79 female) and 99 Anglo (47 male, 52 female) undergraduates. The instrument used was the Sexual Knowledge and Attitude Test (SKAT; Lief & Reed, 1972). The first section of the SKAT consists of four attitudes subscales dealing with autoeroticism, abortion, heterosexual relations, and sexual myths. The second section includes 50 true-false items testing knowledge of the biological, psychological, and social facts of human sexuality. The last section focuses on the respondent's sexual value system and practices. The design was a 2 (ethnicity) X 2 (gender) X 4 (religion) X 3 (socioeconomic status) incomplete factorial, in which the effect of interest was ethnicity. This effect was assessed controlling for subjects' age, gender, religious preference, and socioeconomic status. The dependent variables were subjects' sexual attitudes, knowledge, sexual value system, and sexual practices. Tests of significance were undertaken separately for each set of dependent variables, with a correspondingly reduced alpha level. Significant differences were obtained between Mexican Americans and Anglos, in attitudes, knowledge, value system, and practices, in clear support of the hypotheses.