ABSTRACT
The popular notion that the provocative images of sexuality saturating television programming could push adolescents prematurely into sexual encounters is well entrenched in our society. Indeed, over the last few decades the sexual content of television has increased substantially (Kunkel, Cope-Farrar, Biely, Farinola, & Donnerstein, 2001; Kunkel et al., 2003), and adolescents are consuming media in ever larger doses (Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005). Hence, it is not surprising that understanding how television may influence adolescent sexual behavior has been identified as an important research objective. However, in order to assess the impact of television on adolescents’ sexual choices, it is necessary to first analyze the programming that adolescents watch to determine the salient dimensions of its sexual content.
