1. How Do Teenage Girls Use Media to Shape Ideas about Love & Romance?
3/31/2017
How Do Teenage Girls Use Media to Shape Ideas about Love & Romance?
A Study of Teenaged Girls’ Romantic Identities
My research looks at how media messages about romantic relationships affect adolescent girls, based on the assumption that dominant romantic scripts contribute to young people’s sexual risk-taking.

2. 3/31/2017
Introduction
If we can better understand what role the media play in how girls think about love and romance, we will be better able to develop sexual health messages.
Romantic beliefs
Sexual risks
Media
Understanding how the media romantic content impacts young girls and predisposes them to sexual risks, will help us design more effective sexual health messages.
Looking at the interaction between young women and the romance they watch or hear will not help us understand the problem -- what attitudes lead women to sexual risk-taking; and it will enable us to choose the most appropriate message channel, content and style -- to tailor messages for each subsection of the adolescent female audience.

3. Specific Aims Assess need: Plan strategy: Design message:
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Specific Aims
Assess need:
how do young girls use media to shape attitudes and beliefs about romance?
Plan strategy:
develop & test audience segmentation strategy based on romantic beliefs
Design message:
what’s media environment?
pilot an educational web site
This project shall use several multiple types of data to address three goals:
to examine how the media play a role in shaping young girls’ attitudes and beliefs about romance; to answer the question, what messages are adolescent girls getting now that may contribute to sexual risk-taking?
develop and test an audience segmentation strategy based adolescent girls’ thoughts about love, romance and relationships;
and to design and pilot-test an educational web site to promote healthier attitudes about relationships among teen girls.
What I shall describe here is formative research conducted for Internet-based health communication campaigns seeking to address sexual health problems among adolescents.

4. Sexual Risk for Teen Girls
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Girls twice as likely as boys to get common STDs
Girls ages highest gonorrhea rates in U.S.
Asymptomatic infections harder to diagnose
Long-term complications more serious
Young women have special risk:
thinner cervical mucus
multiple partners
Less negotiating power in relationships
I initiated this project with an interest in reducing adolescent sexual risks, but I shifted my focus to romantic attitudes because I believe the ways we think about relationships can be precursors to sexual risks, especially for teen girls.
Biologically, girls are more at risk of negative consequences from poorly thought-out (or involuntary) sexual involvement than boys (McCauley, 1995). They are the ones who suffer, primarily, from unintended pregnancy, and girls are twice as likely as boys to get common sexually transmitted diseases (such as chlamydia and gonorrhea) (Eng & Butler, 1996).
In addition to their biological risks, young women typically have less negotiating power than their partners, who are usually male and often older, stronger or more aggressive.
CDC. HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 1994; 5: Germain A, Wasserheit J, eds.
Reproductive Tract Infections: Global Impact and Priorities for Women’s Reproductive
Health. New York: Plenum Press, 1992.

5. Sexual Media Content
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Media scripts convey frequent messages about love & sex, but few mention risks and responsibilities.
Prime-time TV: 1 in 10 scenes mention risks, protection or consequences
Internet: 2.2 million sites on “sex education” (most are pornographic)
Mass media (television, videos, movies in theaters, music, magazines, computers) convey frequent messages about love, sex and romance, but few scripts mention risks and responsibilities, such as abstinence, condom use, abortion, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Advocates for Youth. Talking with TV. Washington: Advocates for Youth, 1996.
Dale K, et al. Sexual Messages on Family Hour TV: Content and Context.
Santa Barbara: Children Now, Kaiser Family Foundation, Huston, Wartella & Donnsertein, 1998.

6. Dominant Sexual Scripts
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Dominant Sexual Scripts
Traditional script (in Seventeen Magazine)
precludes:
sex outside marriage
female desire & pleasure
promotes:
heterosexual orientation
intercourse (over other sexual acts)
The plethora of mass media sexual content is accompanied by a virtual tidal wave of messages about illusory notions of love -- that if a girl looks good enough, she will attract the right heterosexual partner and achieve fulfillment in life.
Young women are virtually bombarded by contradictory or unhelpful media messages about romantic behavior that may encourage risky relationships.
Media may contribute to conflicts over questions of romantic identity -- who one is, who one should strive to be, and how one is perceived by others, in sexual and romantic relationships.
Carpenter, L. (1998). From girls to women: Scripts for sexuality and romance in Seventeen Magazine, The Journal of Sex Research, 35, 2,

7. Dominant Romantic Scripts
Recreational orientation to sex (on prime-time TV):
cheating; scoring
stealing partners
fighting over dates
Relational orientation to sex:
emphasis on love & happiness
Ward, L.M. (1995). Talking about sex: Common themes about sexuality in the prime-time television programs children and adolescents view most. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 24(5),

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Media Effects
Girls who accept dominant romantic script(s) may be vulnerable to greater sexual risks:
Focus group research shows that girls who idealize romance are least likely to plan out sexual encounters and use contraception.
Longitudinal study finds girls who subscribe to traditional female stereotypes initiate sexual intercourse earlier.
Focus group research across the country shows that girls who idealize romance are the least likely to plan out their sexual encounters and to use contraception.
Another study found that girls who fit traditional feminine stereotypes are most likely to initiate sexual intercourse early (Thompson, 1995; Foshee & Bauman, 1992).
Thompson, 1995; Foshee & Bauman, 1992.

9. Reactions to Romantic Content Vary
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Reactions to Romantic Content Vary
Not all girls get the same messages.
Adolescents seem to cluster into distinct categories of romantic or sexual beliefs.
These categories may be correlated with specific patterns of media use.
We know that not all teenagers tune into the same kind of media, and that interpretation varies with the individual. Different teens may interpret the same messages differently. Some girls may give embrace dominant romantic scripts, while others give oppositional or negotiated readings. Brown, White and Nikopoulou (1993) found three patterns of attention to and use of sexual content in the media among early adolescent girls -- Disinterested, Intrigued and Resisting. Each category of media use was closely associated with a girl’s sexual experience and beliefs about love, sex and relationships.
Recent research in the United States, Australia and Great Britain shows that teenaged girls also differ with respect to their romantic beliefs -- and, perhaps more importantly, these belief categories were related to distinct levels of sexual risk. For example, adolescents in Australia could be labeled Sexually Naive, Sexually Unassured, Sexually, Competent, Sexually Adventurous, or Sexually Driven -- based on their responses to belief questions about self-esteem and style -- and these categories turned out to be related to whether a person had casual or regular partners, what number of sex partners they had, and whether they engaged in one-night stands (Buzwell & Rosenthal, 1996).
The possibility that romantic beliefs may be related to BOTH sexual risk level AND media use motivated this project.
Thompson, 1995; Pipher, 1994; Brown, White and Nikopoulou, 1993; Buzwell & Rosenthal, 1996.

10. Can Adolescent Girls Be Segmented by Identity?
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Can Adolescent Girls Be Segmented by Identity?
How girls use sexual media (Steele & Brown, 1995)
Disinterested
Intrigued/Conformers
Resisters ?
Categories of girls’ relationship behavior
(Thompson, 1995)
Romantic idealists
Hell-raisers
Sporting Girls
Players
Fast-track career girls
Mothers
In focus groups with US adolescents, Thompson found that girls clustered into distinct categories of romantic beliefs, and these beliefs were sometimes correlated with contraceptive use.
Romantic idealists are captive to the myth that their lives will be made meaningful by a man with whom they fall in love. They may be least likely to use contraception, due to their illusory notions about love, causing them to avoid thinking about the possible unpleasant outcomes of sexual interaction.
Hell-raisers resist the mainstream ideology of romance and may be angry or depressed. They tend to be cynical about their prospects for love, and may take drugs, drink, or have sex without expecting love return. Perversely, these girls may be most likely to practice contraception, due to their realistic worldview .
Shy girls are not interested in boys, sex or love. They may be interested in members of the same sex, or not yet ready to explore sexuality. They may be interested in hobbies, games, or sports.
Fast-track career girls keep their eyes on the road ahead. Although they may have boyfriends, they avoid getting deeply involved in romance or sex.
Some girls idealize motherhood. They either purposely do not use birth control because they believe having a baby will bring them love, or they do not feel capable of preventing sex or pregnancy.

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Research Questions
R1. Can a coherent set of Romantic Identities be distinguished among early adolescent girls?
R2. What role do media play in development of young girls’ Romantic Identities?
Can adolescent girls be segmented according to their romantic beliefs?
What relationship messages do young adolescent girls get from the mass media?
What are teen girls’ reactions to an educational web site about love and romance?

12. Research Design Focus groups Written questionnaire Web pilot test
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Research Design
Focus groups
segment audience
identify need
design web site
Written questionnaire
pilot test measures
Web pilot test
refine site’s effectiveness
This project uses a multi-method approach to examine whether adolescent girls cluster into distinct identity types with regard to their thoughts about love, romance and relationships; and to examine how the media play a role in shaping young girls’ attitudes and beliefs about romance.
This project consists of three phases:
1) Focus group data were used to:
a) explore Romantic Identities as a strategy for audience segmentation and to develop a measurement tool that I shall call the Romantic Identity Typology;
b) to identify the health need that this communication project shall address -- by ascertaining what relationship messages girls’ get from the media; and
c) to design the health message.
2) This typology was pilot tested in questionnaire format and items were examined for internal reliability and concurrent validity.
3) Qualitative data from a web pilot test were used to further test the validity of the Romantic Identity audience segmentation strategy, and to refine the site’s effectiveness.

13. Sample Number: Age: 11-15 Gender: Female
3/31/2017
Sample
Number:
Focus groups (n = 7 groups x 2-12 = 46)
Survey (n = 128)
Web pilot-test (n = 26)
Age: 11-15
Gender: Female
Subgroup: Upper middle-class, middle-class and low-income, white & African-American.
Location: Teen programs & schools in North Carolina & New York
I picked young adolescent girls because they continue to be one of the most vulnerable to sexual risks of all age groups in society, and they are uniquely targeted by the media’s glamorization of sex without consequences.
Although I used a non-probability sample because my research is primarily qualitative and formative, I worked hard to include participants from as diverse backgrounds as possible -- both ethnically and socio-economically.

14. 3/31/2017
Focus Groups
Assessing need, defining the audience & designing the message
Focus group questions:
what romantic/sexual messages do you get from the media?
how do you think about love and romance?
what messages would you prefer to see?
Media exercises
select images from magazines
view and discuss prime-time TV clips
Focus group participants were asked to discuss:
what messages they receive about love, romance and relationships from the media;
their thoughts and feelings about the importance of romance and relationships in their lives; and the different ways of being romantic or sexual that they identified among themselves and their peers;
what messages they would rather see.
Media exercises were conducted with each focus group, involving the selection of images from a wide range of teen, athletic and women’s magazines, and viewing clips from prime-time TV. Girls were asked to pick out images that represented each of the following categories: A) the image most like themselves; B) the image they most want to be like; C) the image that represents their ideal relationship; etc. Afterwards, they took turns discussing what they picked, what it meant to them, and why they picked it.

15. Survey Written questionnaire
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Survey
Written questionnaire
Romantic Identity Typology -
asks respondents to rate how much they are “like” or “not like” each of 6 romantic identity types
Dating expectations -
asks respondents to rate how important they perceive each of 6 qualities of dating to be
Open-ended media questions
External validity checked in individual interviews
A written questionnaire designed to measure Romantic Identity types was administered in three separate groups.
The survey included open-ended media questions to find out what media preferences belonged to girls of each identity type, helping to answer RQ 2. External validity questions were conducted in group interviews with a small number of survey respondents to determine how they understood the different identity categories on the questionnaire, and how they related the different identity categories to their real lives.

16. Web Pilot Test Students convened in computer labs
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Web Pilot Test
Students convened in computer labs
Each given PC and web site
Navigated individually for minutes
Group debriefing on:
usefulness, like/dislike, and suggestions
did they relate to any Romantic Identity Types?
if so, which ones did they pick and why?
For the web pilot test, students were convened in computer labs at the school or after school program where they were contacted.
Each student was assigned to her own personal computer, given the web site address (URL), and asked to visit the site.
While adult supervisors walked around the room, participants navigated the site for minutes.
After navigating, participants were asked to comment in a group discussion. Specifically, they were asked if they related to any of the Romantic Identity categories on the site, and, if so, to explain which one they picked and why.
A version of the web site that was piloted in my study can be been at

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19. I'm sort of a romantic idealist...
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I'm sort of a romantic idealist...
I get sad when I listen to songs about heart- break. I'm happy when I hear songs about true love.
Sometimes I feel both emotions at once, like with "Angels in Disguise," by Brandy. It's such a pretty song. Everyone should hear it.  More about me...

20. 3/31/2017
I don’t think everyone should try too hard to find love. It’ll just happen.
We talked with some other girls our age and came up with some ideas about how media messages could be improved.

21. There should be a news show by teenagers, instead of Dan Rather.
3/31/2017
Well, after thinking about the whole love issue some more, we decided that:
Media should give us information about other stuff, like conservation and killing of the whales.
There should be a news show by teenagers, instead of Dan Rather.
Everyone wants to find a match, but you shouldn’t think about love all the time.

22. Results Focus Groups Surveys Web pilot-test Three readings
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Results
Focus Groups
Three readings
Surveys
Descriptives
Bivariate analysis
independent t-tests
Web pilot-test
Qualitative data analysis
Responses from the focus group discussions were given three readings:
1) One reading to acquire general impressions of what the girls were saying in reference to the two RQs
2) A second reading focused exclusively on Romantic Identities: Did their comments fit with the identity categories derived from previous research? Were distinct identity types recognizable among the participants?
3) The third reading centered on RQ2, to ascertain if the girls perceived any dominant romantic frames in the media, how they defined them, and how they felt media affected them, if at all.
The survey data were analyzed with a series of psychometric evaluations to test the validity of the Romantic Identity measure. The survey was also analyzed for basic descriptive statistics and bivatiate analysis to look for correlations among identity types and descriptive variables, dating expectations and media preferences.
The web pilot test data were analyzed qualitatively.

23. Focus Group Results
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Identity types & media preferences: Girls chose magazine images that related to their self-assigned Romantic Identity categories
“I chose this image because she’s kind of weird-looking and strange. Because she’s out there, kind of weird looking, like me.” - 13-year-old Raleigh girl, rated as Independent Thinker
“I picked this girl, cuz she looks kind of mad, like something just got on her nerves, and I’m having a bad day today, so I can relate to her.” - A self-described Hell-raiser from Raleigh, age 11.
Preliminary focus group results seem to show a relationship between identity types and media preferences.
For example, as seen on the web site, two self-categorized Romantic Idealists chose Katie Holmes (lead character in “Dawson’s Creek”) as the magazine image they most wanted to be like.
A 13-year-old Raleigh girl, who had rated herself as an Independent Thinker in group discussion, said she chose her magazine image “because she’s kind of weird-looking and strange. Because she’s out there, kind of weird looking, like me. I’m kind of out there. Everyone who knows me knows that’s true.”
Alex, a self-described Hell-raiser, pointed to a model with a frown on her face, and said, “I picked this girl, cuz she looks kind of mad, like something just got on her nerves, and I’m having a bad day today, so I can relate to her.” These data indicate that girls are indeed relating to characters or images in the media that correlate with (or are related to) their self-assigned Romantic Identity categories.
However, it should be noted here that the identity choices are not necessarily stable, and girls may change their identities as they go through adolescence, or even from day to day. This transience of the identity concept does not make it a less useful tool for message tailoring, as long as practitioners can design messages that speak to the identities that are present at any point in time.

24. Focus Group Results (cont’d)
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Focus Group Results (cont’d)
Romantic media content: Girls agreed that TV and magazines idealize romantic relationships, but disagreed about whether that should be different.
“Life is about relationships. Sex is part of relationships. What else would the show [Dawson’s Creek] be about?” - Romantic Idealist.
“Except you never see family relationships on TV,” - Shy Girl.
“It might make you more depressed cuz you realize that you don’t have it. Family. Cuz you didn’t have a good family situation, or not many friends,” - Independent Thinker.
Media discussion comments were also analyzed to ascertain how girls felt the media affected the.
I conducted this reading with the web site in mind, analyzing for critical statements about the media’s treatment of love, romance and relationships to form the educational messages on the web.
Initial results indicate that girls agree that TV and magazines idealize romantic relationships, although they disagree about whether that should be different. It was noteworthy that a Romantic Idealist was most supportive of the glamorous relationships presented on TV and in magazines, while a Shy Girl assumed a negotiated reading, and an Independent Thinker was most critical.
“Life is about relationships. Sex is part of relationships. What else would the show be about?” said the Romantic Idealist.
“Except you never see family relationships on TV,” added the Shy Girl.
“You want to see on TV what you don’t have. And some people don’t have really great family relationships. So, turn on the Brady Bunch. TV tells you what you lack in real life,” explained the first girl.
“It might make you more depressed cuz you realize that you don’t have it. Family. Cuz you didn’t have a good family situation, or not many friends,” critiqued the Independent Thinker.

25. Frequencies of Romantic Identity Types (n=128)
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Frequencies of Romantic Identity Types (n=128)
Frequencies were fairly evenly distributed among the different Romantic Identity Types, with the exception of Hell-Raisers, a first choice for only 2 percent of respondents. I explain this by the fact that the category was derived from the early Sharon Thompson’s focus group work with primarily white subjects, while the majority of my survey respondents -- at least in the first round -- were African-American.
Some categories may be more prevalent for some races, but my samples were not large enough to draw conclusions. Future work might test the presence of these types among representative samples of different racial groups.
Percentage of girls ages who rated themselves “just like” each type, on a scale from 1-4.

26. Psychometric Evaluation
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Psychometric Evaluation
Internal reliability:
Are Romantic Identity Types correlated with each other?
Most categories appear distinct:
Sporting Girl negatively correlated with Romantic Idealists (r = -.362, p = .000).
Some categories overlap:
Mothers & Players positively correlated with each other (r = .256, p = .006)
Sporting Girls & Fast-track Career Girls (r = .355, p = .000)
Second, I ran a series of psychometric evaluations to test the validity of my Romantic Identity measure.
Internal reliability was tested by running bivariate analyses between the responses to pairs of the Romantic Identity questions. Preliminary assessment showed that the Romantic Identity Typology appears to measure distinct categories. For example, the Sporting Girl (14%) was negatively correlated with Romantic Idealists (r = -.388, p = .000) and Players (r = -.304, p = .000) as should be expected. The statements for the other types (Mothers and Players) may need to be revised since they were positively correlated with each other (r = .244, p = .006).

27. Psychometric Evaluation
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Psychometric Evaluation
Concurrent construct validity:
Are identity types correlated with:
dating salience?
dating expectations?
media uses?
Three measures of concurrent construct validity were used to look at the relationships among identity types and:
dating salience (how important respondents rated being in a dating relationship on a scale from 1-4);
dating expectations (to see if expectations about dating matched up with expected responses to the Romantic Identity questions); and
media use

28. Identity Types & Dating
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Identity Types & Dating
Dating salience:
Dating salience was correlated with high score on Romantic Idealist & Player questions
Romantic Idealists and Players said dating was VERY important (r =.391, p =.000; r = .402, p = .000).
Sporting & Career Girls said dating was NOT important (r = -.490, p = .000; r =
-.235, p = .002).
Using bivariate analysis, I found strong correlations between dating salience and some identity types. For example, girls who rated themselves as just like Romantic Idealists and Players were more likely to say that dating was very important to them (r=.419, p=.000; r=.393, p=.000). By contrast, girls who identified themselves as Sporting Girls were more likely to say that dating was NOT important to them (r=-.499, p=.000). Interestingly, Sporting Girls also had less dating experience than their peers.
I also found that items assessing the underlying dimensions of the Romantic Identity Typology -- dating expectations -- were correlated with the Romantic Identity Types as expected.
For example, girls who rated the Sporting Girl as a lot like them were more likely to say that Friendship was very important, and that Romance and Passion were unimportant.
Romantic Idealists and Players (girls who rated themselves most like girls who have a lot of partners) were more likely than other girls to choose love, passion and romance as very important to them.

29. Identity Types & Dating
Dating expectations:
Dimensions were correlated with Romantic Identity Types as expected
Sporting Girls said friendship was important (r = .247, p = .023), but NOT romance and passion (r = -.234, , p = .003).
Romantic Idealists and Players chose passion and romance as important (r = .210, r = .320; r = .245, r = .392, p = .000).
Love was rated highly by Players (r = .251), but less highly by Romantic Idealists (r =.134).

30. Media Use & Romantic Beliefs
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Media Use & Romantic Beliefs
Girls who watched more TV tended to rate involvement in dating relationships as more important
TV hours and dating salience were positively correlated (r = .195, p = .02)
Saturday TV watching and dating salience were even more related
(r = .427, p < .01)
Media use was clearly correlated with dating salience, a key dimension of the Romantic Identity types, when measured by total hours of TV consumption.
Girls who watched more TV tended to rate involvement in dating relationships as more central to their self-esteem (r=.202, p=.02).

31. Media Use & Romantic Identity
Web:
Sporting Girls
music uses of web (e.g.,
Players & Romantic Idealists
chat rooms (Teen Chat or Black Voices Teen)
Fast-track Career Girls
“other” uses of web (e.g.,

32. Romantic Identity Types Media Preferences (n=128)

33. Web Pilot Results Identity types resonated with web users:
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Web Pilot Results
Identity types resonated with web users:
“I like the Rebel page and the Romantic Idealist page. I like the Rebel, because it says you don’t always have to like what everyone else likes. You don’t have to agree with everyone else’s opinions. I liked the Romantic Idealist because it reminds me of myself.” - African-American girl, 13, East Harlem Secondary School
Identity choices shown to be transient - Girls often identified with more than one category.
Web site pre-test results showed that participants were able to find categories they identified with:
One African-American girl, 13, from the East Harlem Secondary School said: “I like the rebel page and the romantic idealist page. I like the rebel, because it says you don’t always have to like what everyone else likes. You don’t have to agree with everyone else’s opinions. I liked the romantic idealist because it reminds me of myself.”
Other comments from girls the same age and race: “I liked the independent thinker, because I agreed with what she said cuz she doesn’t always care what other people think and I don’t either;” and “The shy girl is right, but I can’t really speak for the other types, since I’m not like that and I don’t know what they like.”
The identity choices were also consistent for those girls who had filled out a questionnaire immediately beforehand. The upper-middle class white girls from Raleigh, NC (N = 6) were asked to pre-test the page after filling out the questionnaire and participating in a focus group discussion. This strategy was employed as a quasi-experiment to see if girls belonging to particular identity types would identify with the same categories on the Internet web page.

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Discussion
R1: Is it possible to distinguish Romantic Identities among young teen girls using this Typology? Yes.
Respondents from diverse backgrounds grouped into each category (except Hell-raisers).
Variations for race & age not significant - except for Sporting Girls.
Overlap may indicate the types represent dimensions rather than complete selves.
My data indicate the robustness of the Romantic Identity Typology.
Respondents from diverse racial backgrounds, across ages 10-16, grouped themselves into distinct categories, with a significant portion of the respondents choosing each of the various identities as “just like” themselves. Only Hell-raisers had very few members, with 2.2 percent choosing this category.
The fact that the identity types were correlated with the dating preferences (i.e., Fun, Friendship, Romance, Love, Passion and Family) indicates construct validity for my measure.
Interview data also back up my conceptual understanding of the categories.

35. 3/31/2017
Discussion
R2: Do teen girls use media to shape ideas about romance, love & relationships? Yes, but exactly how is not yet clear.
Identity types had somewhat different patterns of media use.
Early adolescent girls agreed media place a heavy emphasis on love and romance.
Heavy TV viewers tended to place more importance on dating.
My data seem to indicate that early adolescent girls do feel the mass media place a heavy emphasis on love, romance and relationships, and some of them believe they are pressured by the media to focus on romance to the exclusion of other important, development goals. The girls clearly differentiated into distinct categories with respect to their stances or attitudes towards the media’s portrayal of love and romance. Some girls believed that the media’s picture of romantic relationships was at least somewhat realistic, that the emphasis on romance in the media was not too much, and that looking good constituted an appropriate strategy for finding a mate. Even when these girls did not genuinely believe that the media portrayed realistic relationships, they seemed to hold out a fantastical view of their own futures, one that would allow them to find love as portrayed on TV. These girls, whom I have referred to as Romantic Idealists, were present in all class and ethnic groups that I spoke to. Love, Romance and Passion were always more important to them, and they tended to favor media programs that espoused this ideal, such as “Dawson’s Creek” and day-time soap operas, Seventeen and Cosmopolitan magazines; and web sites about shows like “Dawson’s.” Other girls gave what media scholars would call “oppositional” or “negotiated” readings to the dominant media romantic narratives.

36. 3/31/2017
Discussion
Web pilot test comments indicate that Romantic Identity Typology may be a useful audience segmentation strategy for delivering health communication messages to female adolescents.
Web pilot test comments indicate that the Romantic Identity Typology may be a useful audience segmentation strategy for delivering health communication messages to female adolescents.

37. 3/31/2017
Future Research
Evaluate a revised version of web site for impact on sexual beliefs and attitudes
use experimental design
use online questionnaire to measure baseline & post-test variables
Incorporate web site into media literacy curriculum and evaluate for impact
use dependent variables derived from focus group data - relationship salience, romantic self-esteem and media critical awareness
Although my research is formative and exploratory, several exciting patterns have emerged that are worthy of future research.
Evaluate web site for impact on dependent variables derived from focus group data -
relationship salience, romantic self-esteem and media critical awareness.
Test audience segmentation strategy with national sample.
Develop web site that delivers sexual health messages.

38. Future Research
Test audience segmentation strategy - i.e., the Romantic Identity Typology
with representative sample of teen Internet users
with an educational web intervention that is evaluated for impact