Teenage Sexuality
Speaker: Katie Heintz-Knowles (click here for biography)
Soap Summit 2

Transcript of Proceedings
September 7, 1996

KATIE HEINTZ-KNOWLES: Good morning. As Felicia mentioned, normally, or what I spend most of my time doing is watching cartoons. So this was a real nice change for my grad students and I, who were thrilled to think that they actually got paid to watch soap operas for a few weeks during the summer. The purpose of this study, was to look at the sexual content in soap operas in general. We weren't as interested in looking at comparing the numbers of sexual behaviors of different programs. We were much more interested in looking at overall. If you were to look at five weeks of soap operas and flip through the channels and follow different storylines, what would you see? And in what context? I think it's really important, that we get away from talking simply about numbers, and we talk about those numbers in the context of the story-lines, where they were taking place. Numbers can be misleading without some sort of context. We really wanted to make sure that we looked at soap operas in general and then looked at specific story-lines and how different issues were addressed.

There are specific shows named in the report when we do talk about examples. But we didn't go through and make up tables of comparisons between shows. A good reason for that is it could oftentimes be misleading if you merely counted and said, "Wow, look at all of the sex on this program." When in fact this might be the program that has the most discussion of sexual responsibility as well. So we wanted to make sure that we contextualize numbers within the story-lines.

So let me tell you what we did. Starting in the end of May and going through June, three graduate students at the University of Washington and I videotaped 100 hours of soap operas, ten hours from each of the ten soap operas. I realize that ten hours is not a lot in the lifetime of a soap opera, but when you do content analysis in television a 100 hours is a pretty good amount of time. It should give us a good snapshot, if you will, of what's going on during those five weeks of television programming. We looked for sexual behaviors. We looked for different situations where sexual activity was either talked about or depicted visually. This could range from somebody talking about a situation where there was some discussion of, say, a past rape on one television program. That discussion would be coded as a discussion of sexual activity. We had instances where couples would embrace and kiss. That we coded as a sexual behavior. Actually that would have been coded as two.

It would be one sexual interaction that had two specific kinds of sexual behaviors in there. There were some instances where we saw couples who were apparently nude, lying in bed either in the process of intercourse or afterwards. That would be coded. So we have a range of behaviors, looking at both verbal and visual sexual behaviors. And when we found a sexual behavior what we looked for was to see who the participants in the interaction were. What was their relationship to one another or to other people if that was appropriate? We looked at what was their motivation or if we could tell? What was their motivation for engaging in a particular behavior that we were witnessing or hearing about? And then what was the outcome for these participants of this particular behavior? Was there some impact later on either their relationship or in their relationship with somebody else? And specifically because the Kaiser Family Foundation is interested in this, we looked to see if there was an inclusion of discussion of either consequences of the behavior, or planning for consequences of this behavior.

We compared our results with what was found in the 1994 study even though our study is quite a bit larger. It's twice the size of the sample from 1994. 1994 the researcher looked at just the top five rated soap operas. We thought it would be more interesting to look at all soap operas. And so we used the whole population. But it's still worthwhile to make comparisons between the two even though this sample is quite a bit larger. I would like to highlight, again, some of the major results and then I want to open the floor for questions and discussions.

I'm sure you're aware of a number of studies that look at soap operas wherein how much sexual content there is in soap operas and the range of behaviors. The range of numbers that are discovered is very consistent with what we found, indicating that the overall amount of sexual content has neither increased or decreased over the past couple of years in soap operas. But what we did see was a very great shift in the way sexual behaviors are talked about or are included in story-lines. Whereas every other study of soap operas has discovered that sexual behaviors were more likely to be verbally depicted so people were much more likely to talk about sexual behavior than to actually engage in sexual behavior, our study found just the opposite. We found that participants were three times more likely to be shown engaging in some kind of sexual behavior than they were to be talking about it. We're not trying to say here is that soap operas have gotten more explicit. What we wanted to point out was that there are more visual depictions of sexual behavior, but most of those depictions are not of sexual intercourse. In fact, what we found was that there was a marked increase in talk, both talking about sexual intercourse and the depiction of sexual intercourse in our study than there has been in the past. So most of the most frequent behavior that we found was kissing, both modest kissing and longer, more passionate types of kissing.

That was the most frequent kind of sexual behavior that we coded in our study. The second most frequent was romantic embracing, romantic touching. So talk about sexual intercourse and depictions of sexual intercourse were down considerably in our study from the studies that have been conducted before but we did see more. We saw more kissing and we saw more touching and embracing than we had in the past. Number three, discussion and depiction of planning and consequences of activity has increased slightly. But it's isolated in a few discreet story-lines and dealing mostly with consequences. In 1994, the study found that there were five mentions of either contraception or safe sex and there was one mention of AIDS. This year we saw a slight increase in the inclusion of these issues, but these discussions are still relatively infrequent. They occur about one in ten sexual behaviors. These discussions can relate to either pregnancy or disease prevention, although pregnancy was a much more frequent topic of discussion for both planning and consequences. And most of the time that pregnancy was discussed, it was in the context of it having been a planned pregnancy. Characters discussed planning for pregnancy or they discuss a current pregnancy which they had planned. So there's proportionately fewer discussions of unplanned pregnancy than there are discussions of planned pregnancies. These discussions occurred in six different programs, but were in major story-lines of four of them. And I'm going to give you some examples of how these were included in the story-line so you know what specifically we're talking about.

On All My Children there was a situation where a teenage couple were contemplating having sexual intercourse for the first time. The girl was a virgin, the boyfriend had previously fathered a child. And they were very concerned about her not getting pregnant. And so that the girl engaged in discussions with her sister and with her boyfriend separate times about protection against pregnancy. When they actually get into a situation in which to have sex, she produces a condom and we see a condom on the screen. They are interrupted by her father and never get a chance to actually have sexual intercourse. [LAUGHTER] But both the father and the daughter show the condom in the context of a discussion about why they've made the decision to have sex and whether or not they should. So that's one instance where we do see both discussion of contraception and the display of a condom.

Again on All My Children, we saw discussion of the consequences of sexual behavior in a story-line in which a teenage birth mother is trying to regain custody of a child she's given up for adoption. In this context, there are a number of discussions between her, and a number of other characters, about this decision, you know, getting pregnant unexpectedly, giving up the baby for adoption and now wanting the baby back. And in one of these discussions another character reveals that she too had had an unplanned pregnancy as a teen and that she had given the baby up for adoption. It was a good idea for her, and she's trying to convince this other character that it would be a good idea for her as well.

On General Hospital, there's a major character who is HIV positive. And in a couple of situations she and a new partner discuss the precautions they would need to take to protect him if they decided to have sexual intercourse. And so, again, there was a discussion of using protection in it for disease prevention in this case, not for pregnancy prevention in this case. In another scene the same male character is having sexual intercourse with somebody else and he produces a condom and opens the package in a scene in which the two are just about to go to bed. And so we do see, again, a condom display and he opens it. In the other one, the condom remains wrapped, but it is shown and talked about as a condom. These are the two programs that did include displays of condoms that we saw during the five weeks of the study.

Also on General Hospital there was a charity ball to raise money for AIDS research. This sets up some the context for some general discussion about HIV and AIDS. On The Young and the Restless we did see a woman become pregnant unexpectedly. This is an example of an unplanned pregnancy. And there were a number of discussions she engaged in with her mother to talk about how she was going to tell her husband that she was pregnant when he had already made it clear that he did not want a baby at this time. And so she goes through a lot of angst over deciding about what to do and how to tell her husband. On that same program, there was a story-line where a woman whose former husband had cheated on her during their marriage is making an attempt or is making plans to get tested for HIV for both herself and her son because one of the women with whom her husband had slept during their marriage just died of AIDS. So that situation set up some discussions between this woman and her sister as well as the situation of showing them going to a clinic to get blood tests for HIV. On Days of Our Lives, there were a number of situations where we did see pregnancy, either talked about or actually talked about. Nobody in our story-line looked pregnant, but we did have a situation where miscarriage was discussed in the context of a planned pregnancy where this woman's desire was very much to keep this baby. So the pregnancy was discussed and miscarriage was discussed.

There were two other characters who discussed with other people their desire to have a baby. And so in these four particular soap operas, we saw major characters in major story-lines discussing planning for sexual activity, sexual behavior or the consequences of and impacted upon their lives. These kinds of story-lines are really important when you think about the learning impact or the educational impact of television because we know from research that characters who are powerful, characters who are popular, characters who are attractive are much greater role models than are characters who are weak or characters who are unimportant. When we see major characters who are involved in major story-lines address issues of sexual responsibility, it's not unreasonable to speculate that viewers would be willing to engage in similar kinds of discussions or similar kinds of behaviors. But we have to remember that these discussions and depictions occur in just a few story-lines on a few programs. It's not everywhere in the program, one of the concerns is in the majority of story-lines, is that the lack of planning consequences can lead to the impression that sexual behavior is spontaneous and oftentimes without any sort of negative consequences. The fact that these behaviors are carried out by major characters and major story-lines, can have a really strong educational impact.

Okay, the next, number four: most sexual interactions occurred between participants in established relationships with each other. We were curious to find out the relationship between the people who were engaging in sexual behavior, to find whether or not participants were engaged in some sort of monogamous or long-term committed relationship. We found out the vast majority of sexual behavior occurs between people who are committed to one another. We found that characters who are in established relationships or committed relationships are not only more likely to be visually shown engaged in kissing or petting or sexual intercourse, they're also much more likely to be the ones who discuss planning and consequences. Infrequently we see some sort of casual sexual relationship. Or in the very rare cases in our sample, a predatory relationship.

Rape was not a major story-line in any of the soap operas we were watching. In those cases, though, we did notice that for the most part, in the casual interactions, there was not a discussion of planning or consequences. In the interactions between more established couples we did see that there was more discussion of planning and consequences.

One of the things that we tried to do in our study was to look at whether or not there was an explicit connection between the sexual behavior we were witnessing, or hearing about, and some sort of outcome, either later in the scene or later in that particular episode. We also did make an attempt to follow over the five weeks to see if there was a longer term outcome, but it's very difficult to tie real long-term outcomes to a specific sexual behavior over a period of five weeks.

What we looked for was whether or not somebody made a verbal comment about the behavior, either within the scene or sometime within that same episode. It was not unusual after a warm embrace and a kiss, that we heard someone say, "You do know how much I love you, right?" So they gave a response immediately to the behavior. In some rare instances where we saw someone get slapped, after a behavior, or make a comment like "I don't want to see you anymore because of what you just told me about your behavior." We looked for whether there was a positive or a negative outcome. And in your report you'll see there's a breakdown of what we consider positive and what we consider negative outcomes specifically.

We found that the results of, or the outcomes of sexual activity are positive. And not just positive but they are beneficial for the relationship of the participants. We found was for there are very few, both within scene and within episode, outcomes that are negative. Very few of them are negative where we see the result of either damaging the person's relationship or damaging their self-esteem. Most of the time we see that the relationship has benefitted from the sexual activity.

So the part, relationship between the two participants is positive, or has been benefitted by talking about or engaging in some sort of sexual behavior. Again, this kind of result is important when you think about the educational potential of the medium, because we know that behaviors that are rewarded are much more likely to be imitated than behaviors than are punished. If we think about the fact that sex is shown in a positive context where participants are rewarded, we can assume that those behaviors are more likely to be imitated than behaviors where somebody was punished for engaging in them.

We looked at the tone of sexual interaction. This is interesting because nobody has really looked at this for soap operas, but for prime time. There's great discussion about the way that sexual information is represented. And in prime time we know that most sexual behavior in prime time is verbal. Most of it consists of sexual innuendo. And it's mostly set in a humorous context. And so we were curious to see if that was similar for soap operas or if that was different. To nobody's great surprise we found that in soap operas there is very little light-hearted and playful discussion or depiction of sexual behavior. Most of the sexual behavior in soap operas is set in a moderately serious context.

Just to give you an example, we would have categorized as heavily dramatic some of the fantasy sequences or memory sequences. When you see someone remembering a lost love, for example. There were a couple of instances in this particular time period where people died and were remembered, or divorces were finalized, and so happier times were remembered. Those were often very dramatic sequences. There was music, there was often crying. That would have been categorized as heavily dramatic, rather than moderately dramatic.

On the other side, if we're looking for sort of light-hearted and playful kinds of interactions, there was one scene that sticks out in my mind. There was a situation where a big party was being planned on one soap opera and a crucial prop was missing and somebody shows up with it right at the very last minute. He's discovered the prop that they need for the party. And his girlfriend runs up and says, "My hero" and swoons and falls into his arms and they kiss and everyone laughed. We considered something like that to be a light-hearted and more playful kind of interaction.

Then the more, typically more serious interactions when people have more serious sorts of embraces and sorts of kisses. So we see a great difference between the way sexual relationships are represented on soap operas versus prime time programs. One of the last major points we thought was interesting is the depiction of the relationship between alcohol and drug use and sexual behavior. We were curious to find out if alcohol or drugs played any part in sexual behavior. We found that in some instances we do see alcohol or drugs being used. But for the most part, most sexual behavior is not proceeded by, or doesn't occur during, alcohol use or drug use. When we do see alcohol use, usually it's a romantic dinner where couples are sharing a bottle of wine or a bottle of champagne or maybe they're not eating, but couples will come home from work and have a drink, for example, and then proceed into some sort of sexual behavior. There were a couple of weddings during our time period, so we saw people at wedding receptions toasting with champagne and kissing and getting romantic. So there were situations where we did some alcohol use.

The only time we saw drug use in the program related to sexual interaction, was in a story-line in which a woman is using prostitution as a way to support her drug habit. So we see the connection there, but otherwise we don't see drugs in the context of sexual activity in soap operas at all. These are the major findings, what we considered to be some of the most important findings. There's a lot more explicit, specific information in your report, but we thought it was important to talk specifically about these particular messages because of what we know about the way people use television.

All of you have examples of actors on your programs who get assaulted on the streets by people who get upset because their character is not behaving in a way that people approve of, or actors getting gifts from someone because of what their character is doing. So it's very obvious that people form relationships with actors and characters on soap operas. If you look at what people potentially could be learning from the kinds of things that we saw during our five weeks, we'd know that viewers are getting ample information about sexual activity. Most of it promotes the idea that sexual activity is appropriate and beneficial for heterosexual couples in established relationships.

We found a number of visual depictions. These can provide models for viewers to either emulate or to compare with their own sexual relationships. We know that that's one of the things that adolescents. They compare their own relationships with the sexual relations that they see on television. Often times they come up feeling short-changed. The discussions and depictions that we talked about of planning consequences, can provide valuable information for viewers, not just information about STD's and about contraception. They also provide models for viewers to emulate for engaging in such discussions.

So when you look at this kind of information it's from the perspective, my perspective anyway, of what sort of things can potentially can be learned from these kinds of messages. And I think that primarily what we're finding is that there's some very interesting things that can be learned from soap operas. So does anybody have any questions?

QUESTION: What were you most surprised by in the study?

KATIE HEINTZ-KNOWLES: I was surprised by the decreasing emphasis on sexual intercourse. If you think about the way soap operas are talked about, they're often talked about as if they're very explicit. We discovered that they really aren't anywhere near as explicit as sort of the lore about them.

QUESTION: Your number four about the fact that sexual interactions appear between people with established relationships. Is there anyway of measuring whether or not that has changed over the last couple of years?

KATIE HEINTZ-KNOWLES: No, unfortunately:

QUESTION: In number seven, alcohol and drug use prior to sexual activity. How does the depiction on soap operas compare to reality?

KATIE HEINTZ-KNOWLES: To reality? Felicia, can you answer that better than--?

DR. HANCE STEWART: The fantasy that's being putting out there doesn't relate to reality of the drugs and alcohol that teenagers are using. So they are swept away by drugs and alcohol and the use of it becomes another issue. In terms of the discrepancy between reality and mythology is what the American mythology would be. Now I can understand that it's probably really hard to write a really great script about a sexual relationship. The truth is that for most of us six times, an hour is not, you know, is just not sexuality in our lives. So that was the most frightening. One of the most encouraging things to me was that the sky did not fall in when the condom appeared on TV. The fact that he didn't notice any major national cataclysmic controversy or, you know, the TVS did not go blank across the nation. So I thought that was one of the more wonderful thing. Obviously you people can do courageous things and get away with it.

QUESTION: Were there any storylines of sexual activity involving older people?

KATIE HEINTZ-KNOWLES: It's in the report. Where is it? Page 15. We found that teenagers and older adults of 60 plus, is how we categorize older adults, counted for a small number of the participants in the actual behaviors. Most of the participants were adults we categorize between say ages of 18 and 59. But if you break up that younger age group was the one that accounted for the most. So between say 18 and 35 was the most characters of, in that age group were the most frequent participants in sexual behavior.

QUESTION: I lost you when you said there were two items of sexual activity in one scene.

KATIE HEINTZ-KNOWLES: Okay. We had three different ways of categorizing behaviors. We looked at specific sexual behaviors which are in Table 1 of the report. You'll see the breakdown of what we're talking about somewhat. Under "Talk" there were 82 categories of different kinds of talk so we can get very specific in terms of what was being talked about. We looked at discussions about sex, sexual behaviors. Somebody talking about having slept with someone the night before or someone talking about a past affair or someone talking about a rape would be considered a talk about sexual activity. We looked to see if they included discussions of planning or consequences related to either pregnancy or disease There was also what we considered sexual or seductive talk, not talking about a behavior, but trying to get someone to engage in a behavior. So, oftentimes, the worst sexual talk that accompanied some sort of activity or trying to achieve some certain behavior. And then we had a category list of behaviors which we took from what other people had also looked at so we could make better comparisons. These ranged from all sorts of modest behaviors like romantic touching, stroking the face, for example, stroking hair, embracing, all the way to the highest level of explicitness which would be sexual intercourse. And we categorize each individual behavior. So if someone was talking seductively while also caressing someone, we would have coded that as two specific behaviors but taking place in the context of the same interaction. We wanted to make sure that we were able to, to categorize whether behaviors occurred together or whether they were related.

There's three levels. Specific behaviors, interactions which occur within a scene, what you see in one discreet time. And then we also looked at behaviors that were related over a number of different scenes. Because there were a number of cases as you know where you keep cutting back to the same scene or you come back to something after a commercial break. And we link those two as sequences. As you get more and more general, we see smaller numbers. There were approximately 600 individual behaviors, approximately 400 discreet interactions, and then about 326 sequences, which were behaviors that were linked together throughout a single episode.

So that's how we looked at it. The reason why we presented the numbers in terms of behaviors is because that's how they're generally presented in other reports. So if we want to be consistent in talking about that, we need to look at specific behaviors. One thing we did do differently. If two people kissed, for example, we'd count that as one behavior, not a behavior for each one. Sometimes it gets misleading in other studies if it looks like an enormous amount of behavior because each person is categorized as acting, whether than having it be the same behavior.

SONNY FOX: Thank you Katie.

KATIE HEINTZ-KNOWLES: You're welcome. [APPLAUSE]