Mismatched Educational Expectations and Achievement and Adolescent Women’s Risk of Unprotected First Sex

Abstract

Many scholars highlight the benefits of high educational expectations. The study of adolescent women’s sexual risk-taking focuses on college expectations and high achievement for buffering young women from negative outcomes. But one’s expectations and level of college preparation could be mismatched, which may have negative effects. Congruent expectations and achievement are likely to be most beneficial, while inflated expectations (high expectations and low test scores) and deflated expectations (low expectations and high test scores) are expected to be associated with higher risks. College preparatory versus lower coursework in high school may also moderate or mediate these effects. This study used National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) data with event history and logistic regression analyses to examine how expectations, achievement, and college-preparatory math coursework interact to affect adolescent women’s risk of unprotected first sex. Results show that the effects of expectations are conditional on achievement and coursework: Inflated or deflated expectations (relative to test scores) are associated with the highest risks of unprotected sex, as are low expectations among women in non-college-preparatory math. Theoretically, this has implications for understanding “rationality” in the relationship between educational factors and adolescent women’s sexual risk-taking, as well as for reconsidering the notion that high educational expectations always benefit youth.