“…In both the drug-related and sex-related HIV risk reduction domains that we modelled, the strength of the partial mediation effect decreased in conjunction with levels of NCI: HIV risk reduction behavioral skills (demonstrated needle cleaning and condom application) tended to translate gains in information and motivation into HIV preventive behavior (clean needle use and condom use), particularly among individuals without high levels of NCI, as they appeared more likely to benefit from the information and skills components that were conveyed by the intervention (18, 19). Hence, this pattern of findings might at least partially explain the variation in prior studies regarding the mediating role of behavioral skills between HIV risk reduction information, motivation, and HIV preventive behavior (36–38, 42, 43, 45, 49, 64). …”