Original articleAdolescent sexual behavior and attitudes: A costs and benefits approach
Section snippets
Purpose of the current study
The goal of the current project was to investigate the influence of perceived Costs and Benefits of sexual intercourse on concurrent and future sexual activity among adolescents. This issue has important implications for prevention. If both of these attitude components, specifically Costs and Benefits, are associated with sexual activity then interventions designed to delay sexual activity would need to address both of these dimensions in order to be successful. Alternatively, if either costs
Participants
This study utilized information gathered during Waves I and Waves II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) [26]. This sample was designed to be representative of the United States in terms of geographic region, ethnicity, urbanization, and school demographics. A total of 80 high schools were selected, with the requirements of enrollment of > 30 students and having an 11th grade class. Data was also collected from the associated “feeder” schools, such as junior
Descriptives
Mean scores on the attitude scales were 2.76 for benefits (SD = .74) and 3.38 for costs (SD = .71). Table 2 presents the correlations between benefits, costs, age, gender, religion, and AHPVT. Although most correlations were small, the measure of costs was significantly associated with gender, age, religion, and AHPVT scores and benefits was significantly correlated with gender, age, and religion. A follow-up t-test (t [14,797] = 58.5, p < .001) showed that males (M = 3.08, SD = .68) were more
Discussion
The primary purpose of the current study was to determine the extent to which 2 aspects of attitudes, namely the dimensions of costs and benefits, predicted concurrent and future sexual activity. The results were not consistent with our expectations that the effects of benefits would be stronger than those of costs. The effects of costs were found to be equivalent, if not stronger, than that of benefits. As the past research which suggested this hypothesis was based on college students and
Acknowledgments
Support for this research was provided by grant 1R01HD042406-1 from the National Institute of Child and Human Development to David B. Henry (PI). This article was based on data provided by the Add Health program project. Designed by J. Richard Udry (PI) and Peter Bearman, Add Health was funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with cooperative funding
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