title: Coital status and perceptions about sexual abstinence refusal skills.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To compare perceptions and use of sexual refusal skills.
  
  
  METHODS
  A voluntary, anonymous sample of ninth and tenth grade students (N = 2256) reported their perceptions about and use of sexual refusal skills that had been taught in school. Forty-four percent of the students classified themselves as virgins, 18% reported one sexual partner, and 38% reported multiple sex partners. Coital status groups were compared on measures addressing refusal skills using Chi-square tests.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Approximately one-third of the students reported using refusal skills either a lot or a little, with virgins more likely to indicate that they used refusal skills a lot. Virgins also were least likely to say that they should have used the refusal skills or that they didn't feel like using refusal skills. Furthermore, virgins were most likely to state that they didn't need to use refusal skills. One partner and multiple partner groups were more likely to indicate that they had not been taught refusal skills.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The majority of students did not use the refusal skills taught to them in school; however, all coital status groups used the refusal skills in some capacity. Differences between the virgin and sexually experienced groups present challenges for instructors and curriculum developers. Some of the commonly held assumptions about refusal skill curricula may not be true.
authors.affiliation: The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487, USA. Snagy@ches.ua.edu
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nagy
authors.forename: Graham F D
authors.initials: GF
authors.lastname: Watts
authors.forename: M Christine
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Nagy
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D000407:Alabama; D003075:Coitus; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D020377:Self Efficacy; D012746:Sexual Abstinence; D012747:Sexual Partners / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States