Gender as a moderator of the effects of the love motive and relational context on sexual experience.

The moderator effect of gender on (i) the relation between adolescents' sexual experience on the one hand; and (ii) their orientations towards the type of relational and emotional commitment that they expect to be present before engaging in a sexual relationship, and (iii) having a steady partner on the other was examined. We hypothesized that the relations between these facets would be stronger for women. We utilized a random sample of 253 British adolescents interviewed twice with a 1-year interval. LISREL multigroup analysis with mean structures was used to test the hypotheses, thus offering the opportunity of detecting moderator as well as main effects of gender. Differential effects of emotional and relational commitment and having a steady partner relationship on sexual experience supported the hypotheses.