Exploring sexual self-awareness amongst young people in the UK

Abstract

This thesis investigated an innovative construct referred to as sexual self-awareness. The initial operationalisation of sexual self-awareness incorporates three main aspects; these are 1] Sexual self-knowledge – how young people identify, differentiate and understand their physical and emotional sexual feelings, and how these interact with their sexual activity, 2] Sexual self-exploration – how comfortable they feel exploring their body, including masturbation, and the emotions attached to this, and 3] Sexual self-expression – how they express their needs and desires with potential and current sexual partners, and factors that appear to influence, or have influenced this.

This research initially explored sexual self-awareness through in-depth interviews with heterosexual young women allowing sub-themes to emerge within the three aspects of sexual self-awareness. The findings of the quantitative study and previous research formed the basis for a large number of questionnaire statements in an online survey completed by young women and men. Through factor analysis, these statements were reduced to a reliable scale of twenty-two statements that included aspects of sexual self-knowledge, self-exploration and self-expression, indicating that not only can sexual self-awareness be operationalised but that it can also be measured.

The key findings were that a number of social and sexual demographics associated sexual self-awareness and its sub-scales with young people as a means of identifying different levels in their self-awareness. It concludes that the implications of these findings for policy-makers and educationalists are that UK sex education needs to broaden its scope to encompass comfort with bodies, including male and female masturbation, communication with parents/caregivers as well as sexual partners, and sexual desires and pleasure of men and women.

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