Sex Education, Public Opinion, and Pornography: Replication and Experiment

The topic of adolescent sexual education has been of longstanding concern to health communication scholars, as have mediated sexual socialization processes and effects. Yet few investigations have explored how sexual media use affects adults' attitudes toward adolescent sex education, despite the vital role of public opinion in the policy making process and continued evidence of sexual media's widespread popularity. The present paper presents a replication of a seminal study in this area in the context of a pornography measurement experiment. The replicative component compares results from the original and contemporary data using the same pornography consumption measure. The experimental component compares results in the contemporary data generated by two differing pornography consumption measures. Data are from an ongoing national probability survey of U.S. adults. Results supported the replicability of the original findings suggesting that pornography consumption indirectly affects U.S. adults' support for sex education in public schools through increased acceptance of adolescents' sexual behavior, but this mechanistic process is more likely for the less religious and less likely for the more religious. Implications for the sexual script acquisition, activation, application model's (₃AM) morality clause and abstract scripting postulate, pornography consumption measurement, replication science, and socially polarizing research topics are discussed.