College students' perceptions and practices of sexual activities in sexual encounters

To examine college students' understanding of safer sexual encounters, including expectation for sexual activities, planning for sexual encounters, and ideas about what constitutes "safe" sex.

Exploratory design of college students' perceptions of and actual sexual activities that occurred in their last or most memorable sexual encounter.

Participants in one U.S. university completed three open- and closed-ended questions about their activities, as part of a larger questionnaire concerning contextual factors in their sexual encounters. A content analysis was conducted on data from open-ended questions. Encounters were categorized by risk for further analysis.

No significant differences were found in expectations regarding sexual activities between participants who had risky and safer encounters, except that participants who had safer encounters expected touching through clothing significantly less than did those who had risky encounters. Frequencies of sexual activities varied greatly between the two risk groups. No differences were found between the two groups concerning whether the encounter was planned or in expectation of sexual activities by planning of the encounter. The majority erroneously thought they had "safer" sex. The most reported reasons for believing a risky encounter was safer included the use of a hormone-based birth control method, use of a condom during vaginal sex only, and believing no sex had occurred in the case of oral sex.

For these participants, planning of the encounter was not related to safer sexual activities and safer sexual activities were generally misunderstood.