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An Exploration of Factors That Influence Enactment of Affirmative Consent Behaviors

ABSTRACT Affirmative sexual consent, which is ongoing, continuous, and clearly communicated, appears to be highly inconsistent with the way in which individuals actually negotiate their sexual interactions. The current qualitative research proposes an Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills (IMB) model of sexual consent behavior and elicits, from young, sexually active informants, elements of information, motivation, and behavioral skills that appear to be necessary for engaging in affirmative consent behaviors. Eleven focus groups were conducted (N = 48 participants), which were semi-structured and guided by questions to tap into information, motivation, and behavioral skills aspects of ascertaining and expressing affirmative sexual consent. Two themes related to Information emerged from the data: (1) consent should be verbal, clear, and ongoing, and (2) consent should be natural and free-flowing. Two themes related to motivation were discussed: (1) affirmative consent is awkward, and (2) explicitly asking for consent can be good, but ascertaining consent indirectly is more comfortable. One theme related to behavioral skills was discussed: (1) social and personal factors influence how easy or hard it is to explicitly discuss consent to sexual activity. Understanding factors that influence affirmative sexual consent is an essential step toward developing interventions to promote consensual sexual interactions and explicit sexual communication.