Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Research Articles

Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Among Negroes and Whites

Results from a sample of 903 students and 1515 adults indicate that Negroes and whites differ considerably in the ways in which premarital sexual attitudes are produced and maintained. The white group is less permissive, and its permissiveness is inversely related to church attendance and belief in romantic love and positively related to the number of times in love. In the Negro group these associations were either absent or in the opposite direction. A similar pattern distinguished men from women within each racial group. The theory advanced to explain these findings proposes that the lower the traditional level of sexual permissiveness in a group, the greater the likelihood that social factors will alter individual levels of permissiveness.

The Scaling of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness

Guttman scales for measuring premarital sexual permissiveness are presented and analyzed. The scales have been tested on national adult samples and on student samples. A difference appears in the scale order of questions for the high permissive and low permissive groups. This difference centers about the high permissive groups giving less relative support to affectionless kissing and petting behavior while giving more relative support to coital behavior. The basic 12-item scale may be broken down into several subscales for particular research problems. These scales allow one to classify respondents into various premarital sexual standards and to measure the level of sexual permissiveness.