Longmire-Avital presents at the 60th annual Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality conference

Associate professor of psychology and coordinator of African and African-American Studies, Buffie Longmire-Avital gave a talk titled, “'I Trusted Him to Warn Me': An Exploration of Sexual Health Disclosure Request by Collegiate Heterosexually Active Women,” on Nov. 12 in Atlanta.

Longmire-Avital’s study documented both the approaches collegiate women used to elicit sexual health information from their male partners and the reasons some of the women chose not to request the information. The study also explored how the perception of partner scarcity (i.e., sex-ratio imbalance) was related to sexual assertiveness with regard to gaining sexual health information.

One-hundred and twenty-two collegiate heterosexually-active females participated in this online anonymous mixed-method survey. Results revealed that the majority of the women in the study did not ask their male partners to disclose their sexual health information. Women who perceived greater amounts of partner scarcity frequently listed concern over the conversation being too awkward or invasive as the reason for not being sexually assertive.

Quantitative analysis on Longmire-Avital’s newly developed perception of partner scarcity (PPS) scale reinforced the qualitative findings by revealing a significant relationship between PPS, whether or not a disclosure request was made, and sexual assertiveness.

In addition to presenting the study’s major findings, Longmire-Avital contextualized these findings within a discussion on the need for comprehensive sexual health education to include communication training and to concurrently consider how a woman’s sexual health risk is situated within constructions of gender, power, and her male partner’s risk. Longmire-Avital worked with several undergraduate researchers on this project, Juliana Swaren ’16, Brittany Blake ’16, and most recently, current psychology major Bridgette Agbozo.