CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE : Talk on Sex Lacking, Report Finds

Despite the threat of AIDS, many college students lack an effective communication strategy for negotiating safe sex, according to a report released this week by a Cal State Northridge speech communications professor.

The report by CSUN associate professor Jim Hasenauer was presented Sunday to a conference on “Innovations in Teaching Interpersonal Communication” in Boise, Idaho.

Hasenauer based his findings on interviews conducted over a five-year period by students in his “Communication and the Sexes” and other classes. Between 700 and 1,000 students participated in the interviews between 1988 and 1991, asking friends how their knowledge about acquired immune deficiency syndrome had changed their communication in sexual relationships.

The results, Hasenauer said in a telephone interview, revealed more about how ineffectively students communicate about sexual history and safe sex than how AIDS has changed communication.

“I think what’s happening is that people know they need to communicate, but they don’t know how to do it,” Hasenauer said. “It either isn’t discussed at all or it’s given an indirect shorthand, which is not effective in negotiating safe and responsible sexuality.”

Heterosexuals can have a greater difficulty because they are not used to discussing these issues in a relationship, Hasenauer said.

Hasenauer’s students commonly reported a number of early ineffective strategies. Some respondents believed that they could tell who was HIV negative because they did not look sleazy or dirty. Others frequently felt safe because they were in monogamous relationships, even though both partners may have had past sexual relationships.

The approaches of respondents who did try to communicate about past sexual behavior before engaging in sex were often awkward and, Hasenauer said, included such questions as: “You don’t sleep around, do you?” Such attempts are unlikely to prompt honest responses from the partner, he said.

Despite the limited number of effective sexual communication strategies discovered by his students, Hasenauer said the assignment helped many of them recognize how dangerous sexual activity can be when partners fail to negotiate safe sex. He said he also hopes that the students involved will create their own communication strategy.