Sexual & Relationship Health News Post

August 30, 2023, Durham, NC – As online pornography platforms become more accessible, adolescents are more regularly exposed to sexually explicit material, and at increasingly younger ages. Pornography often depicts male-perpetrated physical aggression paired with sexual activity, and studies have shown that adolescent pornography use is associated with adherence to traditional gender role norms, beliefs in notions of women as sex objects, and acceptance of dating and sexual violence. Given that these harmful beliefs may impact adolescents’ current and future sexual and relationship behaviors, and contribute to dating violence and sexual assault perpetration, it is important to understand how adolescents can [...]

May 24, 2023, Durham, NC – iRT welcomes two new public health summer interns to iRT’s team of world-renowned scientists and creative professionals. Kylia Ahuna and Micaela Brewington bring a wealth of experience to iRT as the newest members of the Community College Health Study team. While community college students make up nearly half of all U.S. undergraduates, they are often overlooked by research and underserved by sexual health education resources. The Community College Health Study intends to change that. iRT’s team has recruited over 2,000 students in collaboration with 30 colleges across the U.S. to better understand the sexual and [...]

December 30, 2022, Durham, NC – iRT Research Scientist Dr. Reina Evans-Paulson is consulting on a grant awarded to North Carolina State University to conduct a meta-analysis on predictors of adolescent condom use. Condoms are the most accessible, cost-effective protection against transmission of STDs and HIV for sexually active adolescents, and they are an effective method of pregnancy prevention for youth. Unfortunately, research has shown that only 54% of U.S. adolescents used a condom the last time they had sex. It is critical that we understand the factors that most strongly predict condom use so that they can be targeted in [...]

iRT scientists, Drs. Tracy Scull, Christina Dodson, and Reina Evans-Paulson, presented a symposium entitled, Promoting Adolescent Sexual Health In The Digital Age Through Media Literacy And Sexual Communication, at the most recent Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in November 2021. Their symposium featured a review of research on the relationship between media and adolescent sexuality as well as the benefits of media literacy education on adolescent sexual and relationship health. They were joined in the symposium by co-authors Dr. Laura Widman and Hannah Javidi from the Teen Health Lab at NC State [...]

July 14, 2021, Durham, NC- Decades of research point to parents having a major influence on their child’s sexual health. High quality parent-child communication has been repeatedly shown to reduce adverse sexual health outcomes. Despite the critical role of parents, research on parent-adolescent sexual health communication (SHC) overwhelming focuses on mothers with little known about the role of fathers.  Furthermore, research on SHC is typically conducted with either parents or adolescents, but not on both simultaneously. New research from iRT scientists investigates both of these blind spots. Authors Scull, Carl, Keefe, and Malik published the results of this research in a [...]

The Journal of American College Health has published a paper from researchers at iRT on the status of sexual health among community college students. The paper, “The Understudied Half of Undergraduates,” takes a look at the behaviors, attitudes, and experiences of more than 250 older adolescents attending community colleges from eight different campuses. Despite being considerably...