| Learning Objective #1: Understand adolescents’ sexual behaviors from a broader social perspective | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Evaluate the effects of each identified latent variable to predict adolescents’ risky sexual behavior by appropriate statistical application |
Objective: This study tests a model of risky sexual behavior among adolescents that incorporates social, family, and peer contexts and compares gender differences to address the potential need for gender-specific preventive interventions.
Methods: A nationally representative sample was drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine predictors of RSB across one year. Key concepts in the model are age, family socioeconomic status, parental control, parental disapproval of premarital sex, parent-child communication about sex, parent-child relationship, deviant peers, and RSB. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the measurement model prior to testing the theoretical model using structural equation modeling with MPLUS 3.01.
Results: A total of 6342 single adolescents in the United States were included, with weighted mean age of 16.46 (SE = .03). The final model supports an appropriate fit to the data (x2 [535] = 4528.65; CFI = .90; RMSEA = .05). Nine hypothesized paths revealed substantive gender differences in the model.
Conclusions: The results point to the critical influence of parents' disapproval of premarital sex and deviant peers as well as the complex mechanisms of family-peer interactions on risky sexual behavior involvement for both adolescent males and females. Knowledge of gender differences in the prediction of adolescent risky sexual behavior will contribute to the design of gender sensitive preventive interventions.