An 18-month study of the attitudes and values of today's college women regarding sexuality, dating, courtship, and marriage, involving in-depth interviews with a diverse group of 62 college women on 11 campuses, supplemented by 20-minute telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 college women yielded several major findings. Marriage appears to be a life goal for the majority of these women, and most would like to meet a spouse while at college. However, there are important aspects of the college social scene that appear to undermine the likelihood of achieving the goal of a successful future marriage. For example, since 1980, women have outnumbered men attending college. Relationships between college men and women today are often characterized by either too little commitment or too much, leaving women with few opportunities to explore the marriage worthiness of a variety of men before settling into a long-term commitment. "Hooking up," a distinctive sex-without-commitment interaction, is widespread on campuses and profoundly influences campus culture even though a minority of students engage in this practice. The term "hooking up" is ambiguous, and could mean anything from kissing to sex. "Dating" has multiple meanings for college women today, ranging from being in an exclusive relationship to casual friendship. College women find it difficult to know when college men consider themselves in a committed relationship. There are few widely recognized social norms on college campuses that define courtship, and social expectations, adult involvement, and guidance about relationships are lacking for most college students. Some recommendations are made to support the creation of socially prescribed rules and norms to guide young people toward marriage. Four appendixes discuss the methodology, list the members of the research team, contain the interview guide, and present the national survey questionnaire. (Contains 3 figures and 14 endnotes.) (SLD)