Sexual Coercion and Perceived Sexual Knowledge Positively Predict Comfort Communicating About Sex in College Students

Objectives Comfort communicating about sex is associated with better sexual health and wellbeing across the lifespan. However, experiencing sexual coercion may decrease one’s comfort communicating about sex. Perceived knowledge about sex may serve as a potential buffer of this association that can be easily intervened upon in college students, a high-risk population for sexual coercion. The current study tested the hypothesis that students who experienced more sexual coercion would have lower comfort communicating about sex, and that higher perceived sexual knowledge would moderate this association.Methods 1714 students (mean age = 19.96; 70% female; 40.5% coercion exposed) were recruited from two large universities in the United States to complete an online questionnaire assessing their knowledge, beliefs, and experiences regarding sex. Using these data, we conducted hierarchical regressions to examine if coercion exposure, perceived sexual knowledge, and their interaction predicted comfort communicating about sex, controlling for gender, age, sexual orientation, and primary caretaker education level.Results Contrary to hypotheses, greater history of sexual coercion was associated with increased comfort communicating about sex (B = 1.95, p = .017). While greater perceived sexual knowledge did predict greater comfort in communicating about sex (p < .001), the interaction between perceived sexual knowledge and sexual coercion was not significant (p = ns).Conclusions Given the unexpected associations with coercion history, future research may consider comfort communicating about sex as an area of posttraumatic growth after sexual coercion. Further, results point to perceived knowledge about sex as a potentially salient intervention point for increasing comfort communicating about sex in college students.