All for Him: Articles About Sex in American Lad Magazines

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Coding Scheme and Definitions

Articles were coded first for their primary topic and then for any other topics that received substantial attention in the article. The list of topics included in the coding scheme was adapted from Bielay and Herold's (1995) study of sexual topics in women's magazines by adding topics specific to men's sexual health and pleasure. Coders were provided with a list of topics and asked, after reading the entire article, to select which one, if any, was the primary emphasis of the article. Topics included in this list were improving one's sex life, what women like, improving one's orgasm, improving a woman's orgasm, sexual satisfaction, unorthodox sexual behaviors or positions, unorthodox sexual locations, HIV/AIDS, other STDs, rape, safe sex, pregnancy, condoms, women's sexual health, abortion, vasectomy, other men's sexual health issues, gay men, lesbians, and drugs or alcohol. Although definitions for many of these are self-evident (e.g., HIV/AIDS, pregnancy), others required further development and clarification. A single article could only have one primary topic, but could mention numerous topics. These were coded for separately, but using the same basic definitions (see below).

Improving One's Sex Life

Content that discusses betterment of one's sex life in general, such as suggesting strategies for getting more sex, better sex, or sex more consistent with the reader's desires and interests.

What Women Like

Describes women's preferences, likes, and dislikes relative to sex or sexual relationships. Possible content could include descriptions of sexual techniques women endorse or personality or physical traits women find appealing in potential sex partners.

Sexual Satisfaction

Discusses the nature of sexual satisfaction, or being contented or pleased with one's sexual experiences or sex life, or offers a definition of what constitutes sexual satisfaction. This is distinct from improving sex life in that sexual satisfaction does not presume current dissatisfaction or necessarily recommend change. An article that suggests that the key to sexual satisfaction is to moderate one's expectations, for example, would really not focus on improving one's sex life, but on being satisfied with the sex life one has.

Unorthodox Sexual Behaviors or Positions

Descriptions of sexual behaviors other than precoital behaviors such as kissing and petting, genital intercourse, and oral-genital intercourse, or specific methods of the same that were deemed unusual or extreme. Examples used in coder training included group sex, anal sex, and bondage not described as "playful" or "light." This category also included descriptions of sexual positions that seemed complicated, contorted, or acrobatic in nature.

Unorthodox Sexual Locations

Descriptions of sexual encounters in places other than a place of residence such as a home, apartment, or hotel, or those that, although in a place of residence, occurred in unexpected locations or atop unusual items of furniture. Sex in bed, on a chair or couch, or on the floor was not considered to occur in an unusual location.

Drugs and Alcohol

This category strictly referred to content in which drugs or alcohol was connected in some way to sexual behaviors, gratifications, or outcomes. Articles about beer would not fit this category; articles that discussed bars where alcohol is served as places to recruit sexual partners, however, would.

Relationship States

Each article was also coded for the predominant relationship state, if any, presumed to be the context of sexual activity as discussed within the article. Seven relationship states were coded: strangers, first date, casually dating, seriously dating, engaged, married, and nonromantic acquaintance (definitions can be found in Table I).

In addition, coders were asked to determine the degree to which each article depicted the main relationship state to be positive and negative, either through overt statements or implication. In order to account for possible ambivalence toward a relationship state, positivity and negativity toward relationship state were coded separately. Each article in which a dominant relationship state was observed was therefore coded for relationship positivity, the degree to which a relationship state is implied or stated to be positive, beneficial, or a source of positive outcomes, and relationship negativity, the degree that a relationship is implied or stated to be negative, harmful, limiting, or a source of negative outcomes. Although this was done initially on a five-point scale (where 0 indicated no positivity or negativity, 1 indicated mild, 2 some, 3 moderate, and 4 indicated extremely positive or negative), low intercoder reliability required the collapse of intermediate scores of 2 and 3 into a single score, which resulted in a 4-point scale.

Images

Each article was also coded as to the nature of the photographic images that accompanied it; following the pattern established by Reichert, Lambiase, Morgan, Carstarphen, and Zavoina (1999), cartoons and illustrations were excluded. The presence of members of each sex in such images was coded, as were the explicitness of those images and the nature of the interpersonal contact, if any, that they depicted. In order to maintain a consistent unit of analysis, individual photographs were not analyzed; instead, coders identified whether any photograph that accompanied an article contained each element in the coding scheme. An article with three photographs of women was coded the same as an article with a single photograph of a woman. In the case of explicitness, the photograph with the highest degree of explicitness was used.

Explicitness was measured on a scale based largely on those employed by Kunkel et al. (2003) for their analysis of sexual content on television and Reichert et al. (1999) for their analysis of images in magazine advertisements. Five categories were employed; images were coded as not explicit (0), suggestive (1), begin disrobing (2), discreet nudity (3), and nudity (4). Photographs were coded as suggestive if a model's attire was considered to reflect a strong effort to display one's body in a sexual manner and included bikinis, very short skirts, and sheer tops. Photographs in the "begin disrobing" category depicted an individual apparently in the process of removing clothing, which, if removed, would reveal often sexualized body parts, specifically buttocks, genitals, or a woman's breasts; models who were wearing only very revealing undergarments were included in this category. Discreet nudity indicated portrayals in which nudity was strongly suggested without showing genitals or women's nipples, though the rest of the breast could be visible. Finally, photographs were coded as depicting nudity if genitals, entire buttocks, or a woman's nipple or nipples were visible and unobscured.

Interpersonal contact was measured using a rubric developed by Reichert et al. (1999); images were coded as not having an eligible couple (0), containing at least two people engaging in no physical contact (1); simple contact (2) such as a casual embrace; intimate contact (3) such as kissing, embracing suggestively, or caressing; or very intimate contact (4) such as sexual intercourse or other direct sexual stimulation. The gender of each pair was also coded.

Coder Training and Reliability

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Two paid coders, both male students enrolled at a large midwestern university, conducted all coding activities for this project. They received 8 hours of training in which they learned the definitions, were presented with examples of content that represented each type, and practiced coding articles from issues of lad magazines not included in the sample. Through repeated practice and discussion about coding decisions, coders demonstrated an understanding of relevant constructs and decisions.

Intercoder reliability was assessed using Cohen's kappa as described by Neuendorf (2002), calculated for each topic, relationship state, and explicitness rating. A total of 20 articles from the sample, chosen at random, were coded by both coders. All kappas were above. 70, which, given the exploratory nature of this study, the conservative nature of Cohen's kappa as a tool for assessing intercoder reliability, and the relatively small sample size (due, in part, to the relative newness of the genre being studied), was considered to be a good indicator of reliability (for a detailed discussion of acceptable levels of intercoder reliability, see Neuendorf, 2002). The two exceptions to this were relationship positivity and negativity, which, as discussed above, did not reach acceptable levels of reliability (.51 and .39, respectively); for each, the categories of "some" and "moderate" were collapsed into a single category, improving the kappas to acceptable levels (above .70).

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Written in: 2/05. Last reviewed 11/05.

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