By Marissa Jones Posted on October 4, 2012 | News | No comment

A faculty-administered survey has found surprising results about the sexual activity of ACU freshmen.

Dr. Jaime Goff, director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic, began conducting an ongoing survey last year that observes how young adults relate sexuality to spirituality.

The survey asked freshmen questions about their sexual attitudes, their dimensions of spirituality, their self-esteem, religious abstinence programs they had participated in and sexual behaviors they had engaged in.

Goff found that 45 percent of freshmen who responded to the survey reported being sexually active.

That was surprising to me, Goff said. But I talked to some youth ministers, and they said that was in line with what they were hearing in their youth groups.

In the 2011 fall semester, freshmen were given a chance to complete a survey in their Bible classes concerning their views of sexuality and religion and how each are related.

As a freshman if you see sexuality completely separate from your spirituality, how might that have either negative or positive effects on your future marriage or relationships? I want to see how this develops over time for people.

Goff also discovered that there didnt seem to be any difference in self-esteem between students who are sexually active and those who werent.

In some ways thats good, Goff said. That means they werent feeling incredibly shameful because we use a lot of shaming techniques I think with Christian young adults and teenagers.

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Survey assesses student sexuality, spirituality