Influences of Pornographic Materials to Male Adolescents’ Sexual Attitudes

Abstract

This research entitled “Influences of Pornographic Materials to Male Adolescents’ Sexual Attitudes” aims to ascertain the impact of pornographic materials such as VCDs, DVDs, Magazines and online materials to male adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behavior. The variables used in the study are the amount of exposure to pornographic stimuli and corresponding sexual attitudes such as engagement in sexual intercourse, voyeurism, sadism and many more. Other factors studied are sexual orientation and socioeconomic statuses of the male adolescents. The respondents who participated in the study are college students from the University of the Philippines in Diliman located in Diliman. Quezon City. The sampling method used is purposive sampling since the population of male adolescents in the said university is too large and may not all be selected to participate in the research. The instrument employed by the researcher is the questionnaire. The questionnaire is composed of two parts: Part I consists of personal information from the respondents like age, sexual orientation, year level, course, etc; Part II is composed of 37 statements measuring the sexual attitudes of the respondents which are divided into the following domains: sexual attitudes, sources and types of pornographic materials. The scores of the respondents under the sexual attitude domain used the mean and the standard deviation. Respondents who answered the statements were rated according to the equivalent score of the statement which measured a particular sexual attitude. This in turn was partially correlated to duration of exposure to pornographic stimuli which has two choices: less than a year of exposure and more than a year of exposure. Partial correlations were employed in determining whether exposure to pornographic stimuli indeed has influence on the sexual attitudes of the male adolescent respondents. Controlled variables include several sociodemographic factors like parent’s educational attainment, annual family income etc. High correlations were achieved between the controlled variables and several sexual attitudes measured. For an example, a Pearson r = 1.000 was established in the sexual attitude domains that measured the respondents’ willingness to engage in pornographic modelling, bondage, voyeurism and the use of sex objects. Significant correlations that indicate .000 were also obtained in the sexual attitudes that measured the use of sex objects, voyeurism and bondage. Regression was also performed to further assess if a trend can be established in terms of the exposure to pornographic stimuli and subsequent sexual attitude. The p- value obtained in the regression is .001 which means it is significant and therefore the predictors have influence on the dependent variable. It also confirmed the researcher’s view that pornographic materials have an influence if not a direct effect to male adolescent’s sexual attitudes. The reliability of the psychological scale included in the questionnaire was Cronbach's Alpha which yielded a result of .725 which means the measured using the scale is moderately reliable. With these findings, the researcher highly recommends that the family, especially the parents should pay close attention to their children especially during adolescence. They should become aware that the family plays a significant role in the bahaviors of their children, whether they become addicted to pornography and develop deviant sexual attitudes or not. It is also strongly recommended that the instruments used in the study be further validated. A larger population of adolescents should also participate to have generalizable conclusions.