Talking about sex talk: an exploratory intervention on sexual selfdisclosure for young women

Farnworth, Megan Jacobs

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129835 Copy

Description

Title

Talking about sex talk: an exploratory intervention on sexual selfdisclosure for young women

Author(s)

Farnworth, Megan Jacobs

Issue Date

2025-07-01

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Guntzviller, Lisa M

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Guntzviller, Lisa M

Committee Member(s)

• Caughlin, John P
• Corr, Catherine
• Thompson, Charee M

Department of Study

Communication

Discipline

Communication

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• sexual self-disclosure
• disclosure
• motivational interviewing
• theory of planned behavior
• intervention
• evaluation
• mixed methods

Abstract

Sexual self-disclosure (SSD)—the disclosure of one’s sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Tang et al., 2013)—can be highly intimidating for many people. Young women, in particular, may face unique obstacles to explicit communication of their sexual likes and dislikes with their partners (Jacobs Farnworth, 2019). The purpose of this study was to implement and evaluate an exploratory intervention designed to empower young women to verbally advocate for their sexual preferences. Grounded in concepts from the theory of planned behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991), this study examined whether and how group motivational interviewing workshops (MI; Miller & Rollnick, 2013; Wagner & Ingersoll, 2013) impacted young women’s attitudes toward SSD, subjective norms around SSD, and feelings of SSD self-efficacy. Moreover, quantitative and qualitative data were examined to determine if any of these potential changes led to increased SSD intentions or changes in SSD behavior. Participants were invited to two 75-minute group MI workshops; 19 participants attended at least one workshop. Evaluation of the intervention used a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative data were collected at three time points (one week before group MI workshops, one week following group MI workshops, and six weeks following group MI workshops) to determine if participants experienced significant change in their SSD attitudes, subjective norms, self-efficacy, intentions, or SSD behavior between any of the time points. No significant results were detected. Qualitative data were collected through in-depth, individual interviews, which occurred between two to four weeks following group MI workshops. Thematic analysis of interview data revealed that participants experienced positive, meaningful impact in the ways they thought about and engaged in SSD. Following the workshops, participants increased their prioritization of their own sexual pleasure, reframed their expectations around the experience of SSD, reimagined SSD outcomes, increased their sense of coping efficacy, developed new SSD goals, initiated SSD, and confronted surprising SSD norms. Participants remained stable in their consideration of impression management in their SSD decision-making following the workshops. Importantly, the qualitative data captured the complexity and nuance of participant experiences, demonstrating that impact was not generalizable across participants; rather, participants came into the study with varying levels of comfort and prior experience with SSD, and left the workshops with tailored salient takeaways. Although the qualitative analysis revealed themes conceptually connected to the TPB variables that were measured quantitatively, the two analyses produced different results. Several possibilities exist for this divergence in findings. Theoretical and practical contributions of this work are discussed.

Graduation Semester

2025-08

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129835

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2025 Megan Farnworth

Owning Collections