Hooking up during the college years: is there a pattern?

Hook ups are sexual encounters that can include a variety of behaviours (e.g., kissing to intercourse) with no expectation of future contact or a committed relationship. Although hooking up is reported to be common on college campuses across the USA, little is known about whether the frequency of hooking up changes over the course of the college experience. Using cross-sectional data and the covariates alcohol use, gender and relationship status, we examined a synthetic cohort of undergraduate students (n = 1003) on rates of hooking up using (1) logistic regression and (2) an applied form of survival analysis. Whereas both analytic techniques produced similar results, survival analysis provided a more complete picture by showing an increase in the rate of hooking up that peaked between spring semester of the first year of college and autumn semester of the second year of college, followed by a gradual decline in hook up rates over subsequent semesters. Findings indicate that gender is significantly related to hooking up in the logistic regression analysis, with women reporting fewer hook ups; however, gender was not significantly related to hooking up in the survival analysis, indicating that there are no differences in the pattern across cohorts. Implications for promoting the sexual health of college students and future research are discussed.