159: Sex and Consent in Contemporary Youth Sexual Culture: The ‘Ideals’ and the ‘Realities’

Dr Emily Setty, University of Surrey (2021)

A summary of the results of qualitative and participatory research which aimed to understand how abstract definitions of ‘consent’ conflict with the realities of English adolescents’ sexual cultures. Two qualitative studies were completed. The first study was conducted in 2016. It involved nine group interviews were conducted with 41 young people (aged 14 -18 years), followed by one-to-one interviews with four girls and three boys. For the second study, the principal investigator spent two weeks in 2018 as an embedded researcher in a co-educational independent boarding school discussing sex, relationships, identity and wellbeing with students (aged 12-18 years).