Hookup Culture at MSU
As a research assistant under Dr. Sarah Prior, I worked on her project exploring hookup culture on MSU’s campus. My work consisted of analyzing over 100 anonymous student responses to a series of open-ended survey questions, thematically coding these responses in Excel, and writing the “Discussion” section of our published article in Sexuality & Culture.
Our article primarily focused on two specific prompts:
- “Talk to me about what the campus culture/climate is like. Please describe in particular issues related to sex/sexuality as well as any other climate issues. In your experience, is there a ‘hookup culture’ on campus? If so, how? If not, how else would you describe it?”
- “Have you participated in a hookup? If you participated in a hookup at any point this year or during your college career, how did you feel? If you have not participated in a hookup, describe why.”
We presented this research at multiple conferences, including Michigan State University’s Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (2024) and the Healthcare, Education, Advocacy, Leaders Sexual Health Conference (2025). While our initial presentation focused on identifying positive and negative themes in student responses, our later work applied the social ecological model to better understand how these experiences are shaped across different levels of the campus environment.
Through this work, I was awarded a research grant from the Provost Undergraduate Research Initiative Award, and completed training in the Responsible Conduct of Research and Institutional Review Board certification.
Poster
Venn Diagram
