The objective of the proposed research is to provide one of the first in-depth analyses of sexual concurrency among young adult women in the United States. These analyses will include investigations into how childhood and adolescent experiences, changes in personal circumstances, and relationship dynamics each contribute to this particularly understudied form of sexual risk-taking. Understanding the determinants of sexual concurrency is a key step toward understanding variation in sexual risk-taking more broadly, and is especially important to consider during the transition to adulthood, when risk-taking behaviors and sexual experimentation are concentrated. Currently, little research is available on sexual concurrency among young adults. Those studies that do exist have been limited to the use of cross-sectional data and data collected at infrequent intervals. Such data sources introduce substantial recall bias and additionally prevent scholars from investigating how concurrency changes over time. In contrast, new data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life (RDSL) study, featuring weeks-level data on the sexual activities of a racially and socioeconomically diverse, population-representative random sample of young adult women, will allow the proposed study to address previously unanswered questions regarding sexual concurrency during the transition to adulthood. The specific aims of this project will be to: (1) determine which childhood and adolescent experiences affect the likelihood of sexual concurrency and the mechanisms underlying this relationship (2) investigate how changes in personal circumstances affect young women?s likelihood of concurrency over time and (3) examine the relationship dynamics that contribute to young women?s likelihood of having more than one simultaneous partner. To meet the specific aims of this research, the proposed study will draw on data from the RDSL study to combine time-varying information on young adults? sexual behavior, time-varying information on their education, employment, and fertility, and static in-depth information on their childhood and adolescent experiences and attitudes and perceptions about sex. Fixed and random effects regression models will be used to assess how the probability of sexual concurrency differs within and across women over a two and a half year period.
