Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1997

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Howard Pollio

Committee Members

Steven Handel, Wes Morgan, Priscilla Blanton

Abstract

This project provided a description of women's experience of making a choice about whether or not to become sexually intimate with a potential partner. The study also involved the development of a procedure for studying decision-making which included both qualitative and quantitative components. The qualitative component was comprised of in-depth phenomenological interview and hermeneutic analysis of narratives. The quantitative component involved the "policy capturing" technique derived from Brunswik's Lens Model. Fifteen adult women participated in both the qualitative and quantitative phases of the project. Findings from the phenomenological procedure included a thematic structure of the experience of sexual choice. Major themes described by participants included: Not Right/Right, Attraction, Intimacy, Control, and Anticipations/ Consequences. These themes were always contextualized within an historical and interpersonal framework; this ground of "Who I Am" involved women's awareness of changes over time in their perceptions of themselves and their worlds. The themes from the phenomenological interviews were used to construct vignettes which were utilized in the policy capturing procedure. For each vignette, participants were asked to rate how likely they would be to engage in sexual intercourse. Stepwise regression analyses were employed to test differential weighting of themes for individual participants and for the group as a whole. Although some of the judgment policies were idiosyncratic, the policies for most participants indicated that the largest proportion of variance was accounted for by the historical and interpersonal ground of "Who I Am." The results of the policy capturing for the group agreed with the thematic structure from phase one. Together, the themes and their ground accounted for 95% of the variance in participants' sexual judgments.

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