Additionally, they theorized that the teens with early exposure would partake in sexual acts prematurely (Brown et al., 2009).
Three thousand students selected from fourteen public middle schools in the Southeastern United States were asked to participate in a longitudinal studying consisting of an initial survey and a follow-up survey that concerned their exposure to sexually explicit material. A longitudinal study was necessary to ensure that the adolescents possessed certain attitudes after a period of time. The initial survey asked several questions about their background such as: age, race, SES, parent education, peer puberty comparison, sensation seeking, amount of exposure to explicit material, and sexual experience. After several interviews, and with the consent of their parents, 1,017 teenagers actually completed the follow-up forty-five minute survey. The follow-up survey occurred two years later and asked questions about their attitudes concerning permissive personal sexual norms, progressive gender role attitudes, sexual harassment perpetration, and if they engaged in sexual acts.
Brown et al. concluded that being black, older, having less-educated parents, lower socioeconomic status, and high need for sensation was correlated positively to exposure, for both males and females. Due to previous research in the field, they calculated the results for males and females separately because they found that males tend to have much more exposure to explicit material than do females, which could possibly skew the results. As predicted, when men had an early exposure to pornography, they tended to: have to less progressive gender role attitudes, more permissive sexual norms, sexually harass other individuals, and engage in oral sex and sexual intercourse earlier. However, the females, too, did have less progressive gender role attitudes and partook in oral sex and sexual intercourse earlier, but they did not have more permissive sexual norms or high sexual harassment perpetration as expected.
