Abstract
Two hundred and eleven undergraduate men and women were assigned to different instructional set conditions and asked to rate (1) the sexual risk depicted in a set of written items describing problem situations undergraduate women might face when dating or interacting socially with men, and (2) the effectiveness of responses to these situations, described by a set of response codes. Results revealed that sexual attitudes and instructional set were the strongest predictors of both ratings. Gender did, however, predict risk ratings for stranger and authority figure situations, with women rating these situations as more risky than men. In addition, women assigned to the risk instructional set condition rated refusal responses as more effective in decreasing risk than did men in the same condition. In contrast, women assigned to the popularity instructional set condition rated the same refusal responses as less effective in increasing popularity than did men in that condition.
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Notes
Further information regarding the development of the items is available from the first author.
The items were constructed to be nonoverlapping and independent. However, in the present study, these content categories were used to assess whether participants’ ratings of the items and possible responses to them would vary as a function of the particular type of problem depicted.
Further information regarding the development of the response codes is available from the first author.
The popularity dimension ratings were of key importance in the past research that focused on the development and evaluation of the items. The analyses regarding this dimension will not be presented in the current study.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank two of my colleagues Drs. William R. Miller and Michael J. Dougher for reading the manuscript and providing helpful comments.
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Yeater, E.A., Viken, R.J., McFall, R.M. et al. Sexual Attitudes and Instructional Set Affect Estimates of Risk and Response Effectiveness. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 28, 232–241 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-005-9018-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-005-9018-1