Human Sexuality

SCHOLARYLY VS. POPULAR
MEDIA ON SEXUALITY PAPER

SCHOLARLY ARTICLE SUMMARY

The article that I chose for this paper is called “Oral sex: Behaviours and feelings of Canadian young women and implications for sex education”. This article was published in The European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care in June of 2010. The focus of the research that was conducted is young woman and oral sex. The hypothesis of this particular article is to provide that in current times, oral sex in young women is an activity that is common and normal (Hess, Malacad, 2010). This researched was conducted by using college students for the sample. These college students were from a university in Alberta, Canada and were all females. There were a total of 181 young, Canadian women from the sample and they ranged from age 18-25 years old. There was a simple method used in this study to gain the information needed for the results. The method that was used was a questionnaire about sexual behavior that was self-administered. The sample had the choice to either mail their questionnaire back or bring it back in person. This was to make the sample feel that it would be more anonymous if they felt more uncomfortable handing it back in person. Some of the questions that were on it were about their experiences and emotions relating to vaginal intercourse and oral sex (Hess, Malacad, 2010). It was in regards to both receiving and giving oral sex. When it came to the questions in regards to emotions, it gave many choices to choose from. Some of the examples of choices to pick from were feelings like disgusted, loved and helpless. Some of the questions had to do with the age of the participant when they had experienced a sexual act and if it was with someone they were in a relationship with, or if it was nothing serious (Hess, Malacad, 2010). The questionnaire also made sure to include questions about the age of the person, where they were from, their education and if they were religious. Something they did not have to do was put their name on it or sexual orientation. The results of this study found that most of these young women were from Canada and that the mean age of all of them combined was 20.29. The other most common locations of their parents’ origin was in England, China and Vietnam (Hess, Malacad, 2010). A large percentage, 76.8% were full time college students and most of them claimed a religion, but did not currently practice it. The results amazingly showed that the percentage of those young women who performed oral sex was greater than those who had vaginal intercourse. 74% had performed oral and 72.9% had vaginal intercourse (Hess, Malacad, 2010). Even though more of these women answered that they felt oral sex was less intimate, that didn’t lower the results of it being performed. This result shows that oral sex is something that has become a casual sexual act in current times and that was the purpose of this study.
MEDIA ARTICLE SUMMARY The popular media article that I chose is called “Teens define sex in new ways” and it was written by Sharon Jayson in 2005. I discovered this article on the USA Today website when I searched for oral sex articles online that could relate to the scholarly article I chose. This article was written in response to a study that was performed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prove the casualty of young people and oral sex. This article contains information about the results and the opinions of different psychologists and researchers about these results. To name a few who contributed their knowledge to this article was Psychologist, Don Ramp Walsh, Psychology Professor, W. Andrew Collins and Physician, J. Dennis Fortenberry. The purpose of this article was to show proof that oral sex amongst young people was considered very casual these days. They were able to present this in this website article by giving information on a study that was done on teens who ranged from 15 to 19 years of age. The article provides that 55% of this group were boys who said they had tried oral sex (Jayson, 2005). It states that 54% were girls who said they have tried oral sex (Jayson, 2005). The article also informs the reader that the amount of boys and girls from this sample who have tried actual intercourse was actually less than those who experienced oral sex. Even though the article does give evidence that was found in a study, it is truly an opinion based study. The opinions of the different contributing sources speak about how society today is different than before. They discuss how the young people’s approach to what they may believe is right in a relationship, is actually wrong. They believe that their casual oral sex approach could actually ruin the chances of a good future relationship (Jayson, 2005). It is also discussed in the article that before oral sex was something that was more special, even more so intimate than actual intercourse (Jayson, 2005).
COMPARING THE TWO The subject of both the scholarly article and the popular media is the main thing that both of these articles have in common. Both of the articles discuss information about the casualty of oral sex in society today among young people. Even though one of the articles is based off of a study and shows numerical results, the popular media article also gives some numerical results. Even though these articles discuss the subject of oral sex among the young people in today’s society, the scholarly article is different because it is based solely on a female research result. The popular media article is based upon the results from both male and female. Something that is also different is that the popular media article has many opinions in it. These opinions are made because of the results that were presented. The scholarly article is purely scholarly and does not give opinions on what is thought about young people performing oral sex. I feel that the value that the consumers are encountering when reading these articles is very similar. This article could be very helpful for young people to see what is going on in today’s society among their own peers. I think both of these articles could also be helpful when considering future studies. They could be used as examples and a future study could be improved since these have already been presented to the public. Another thing that can be helpful about both of these articles is that parents who are concerned about the sexuality of their adolescent children. These articles can be informational tools that can help parents and even counselors gain more knowledge on the subject in order to learn how to approach it with adolescents and young adults and teach sex education. Something that is not given to the consumers is variety and I think that is the main con of both of the articles. The popular media article does not say how many 15-19 year old adolescents were used when this research was conducted. If there was a small amount, this could make the reader not truly believe in the results. The scholarly research article also used a very small sample of just 181 women. This sample size might also be considered too small to use as true evidence. With such little evidence presented to the audience, it could be difficult for one to believe. There are many different reasons why the scholarly article is the best one when picking from the two, if a person is searching for informational tools on oral sex among young individuals. By presenting a research study in this manner, we are able to investigate all the details in which how the study was performed. There are details about how it was conducted, which may be helpful when considering a future study. If there might be another methodology that could be used when conducting another research like this, we may be able to figure that out with the results of this study. The scholarly research article also gives the detail about how the study was conducted with questions about each samples emotional thought on oral sex. With the answers to these questions, it makes it clear for the reader to see why the results came out the way they did. The scholarly article is also better because it displays bar graphs that help to emphasize the numerical results that are important in helping to understand. The fact that the scholarly article is based on pure facts, it makes it better because opinions aren’t used to alter the reader’s own opinions that they may come to conclusion with.
The popular media article is the best because it is easier to understand for a wider variety of individuals. This isn 't an article isn 't purely based upon numerical facts. It also gives a wide variety of opinions from not only psycholgists and other credited people, but also from teenagers. This type of information makes it easy for adults and even adolescents to read and relate to. This is an easily accessible article also, which can be helpful to parents who might need resources in finding out things like this about their adolescent children. It is found on the World Wide Web on the USA Today website, which is very well known and trusted by many.
Something that also makes the popular media article better than the scholarly article is all the opinionated information about the effects of young people using oral sex so casually. This is information that the scholarly article did not provide. It merely showed that young women used oral sex casually. The popular media article gives professional opinions about the negative things that this could possibly cause for the future of relationships. With that information, parents can use it to guide their adolescent children into making the proper decisions as they enter into relationships, if they are trying to have long lasting, healthy relationships.
I believe that the reasons that professors like students to use scholarly based articles because they are pure facts. Usually opinions are not included in these articles. They give specific numerical facts, along with charts and graphs to help the reader to understand the results exactly. With researches presented this way, the reader can usually come to their own opinion based upon the results presented. There are no other opinion included that may alter someone 's thoughts on the subject. When it comes to popular media articles, they are too opinion based and that may make someone more likely to believe in someone else’s ' opinons, rather than coming up with their own based off of facts.
I think that formally studying sex is very important actually. Though we do learn through experience, we seem to only learn throughout own and through our immediate environment like home and peers from school. Formally studying sex is a way for people to learn facts and gain more knowledge outside of what they already know. It could be helpful in many ways to not only individuals, but society as a whole. With this type of information, we can continue to see that sexual education if extremely important in schools. We can continue to see the statistical growth in harmful things such as sexually transmitted diseases and adolescent pregnancies.
CONCLUSION
From reviewing both the scholarly article and the popular media article on the same subject, I was able to find out the advantages and disadvantages of both of them. From a scholarly point of view, the scholarly article seems to be great to use when wanting to prove information on a subject and needing the facts, which is usually what might be required in a college level course. It is obvious that from the scholarly point of view of this subject, a person is able to gain their own opinions when presented with the facts. The popular media article is also important because it gives people more of an insight on how the rest of the country is feeling on this same subject, which can also be helpful in understanding where our youths are coming from when it comes to oral sex. Understanding youths from getting their opinions from popular media articles could also help to make changes or research further on the subject. Both articles, in my opinion are of great importance.

REFERENCES:
Hess, G.C, Brea, M.L (2010). Oral sex: Behaviors and feelings of Canadian young women and implications for sex education; The European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, 15:177-185
Jayson, S. (2005) Teens define sex in new ways; USA Today; Health and Behavior http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-10-18-teens-sex_x.htm

References: Hess, G.C, Brea, M.L (2010). Oral sex: Behaviors and feelings of Canadian young women and implications for sex education; The European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, 15:177-185 Jayson, S. (2005) Teens define sex in new ways; USA Today; Health and Behavior http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-10-18-teens-sex_x.htm