Context:
At Hamilton College we were given an assignment to investigate the “hook up” culture on campus. I worked in a team of 3 to complete this project. We wanted to address how “hooking up” is defined and what factors influence a student’s decision to hook up or opt out.
Method:
Our team used four methods to conduct our research. First, we wrote a literature review about the history of the “hook up” culture. Second, we conducted focus groups, with each teammate conducting their own group of 5 cisgender women. Third we used surveys to get a numerical feedback of “hook up” culture. Lastly, ethnography was conducted to observe the behavior of students in a party environment.
We used our literature review to examine how the term “hook up” came to be and gain a background on its history.
Focus groups was a chosen method because we wanted the women to feel more comfortable sharing sensitive information. Our open codes were religion, family, class, and the party scene , while our closed codes were friendship, expectations, social lubricants, and “sexy but not too sexy.”
We wanted a quantitative perspective and choose to conduct a Survey Monkey survey and analyze it in Qualtrics. The survey was utilized to capture general attitudes from a large data set. 102 out of 500 people responded. The first independent variable was “How often do you initiate the hook up?” and the first dependent variable was gender. The second independent variable was, “Do you feel comfortable drinking at a party if your friends aren’t there?” with the second independent variable as class year.
Lastly, ethnography was chosen in order to observe what students actually do, rather than self-report.
Timeline:
This project took four months to complete. Each method took a little less than a month to iterate, organize, and execute. It took another month to bring all of the research findings together into a report.
My Role:
Project owner.
Outcome:
Our survey showed no correlation between gender identity and initiating a hookup, nor between class year and comfort level drinking without one’s friends around.
Our ethnography revealed that those who identified as men were responsible for pushing boundaries , while bystanders were a constant presence during the pre-game and party.
Focus groups demonstrated that those who identify as women are placed under a lot of pressure to dress a certain way. The groups demonstrated that friendship, alcohol, peer group expectations, and norms about sexiness have a stronger influence than religion, family, or class in respect to Hamilton College’s hookup culture.
Our report was chosen to be presented to the Hamilton College Title IX Department as a valuable resource for Hamilton student activity and attitudes concerning "hookup" culture.
