Explaining the association of race and ethnicity with the HIV/AIDS-related attitudes, behaviors and skills of high school students

Abstract

This study deals with intervening factors such as family composition, religiosity, and I/IV/AIDS knowledge in understanding the association of race and ethnicity with HIV/A1DS-related attitudes and behaviors. Data represent Wave 1 of a five-month panel design involving 10th grade students in eight public high schools in Dade County (greater Miami) Florida. Significant differences in attitudes and behaviors were found among racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, Hispanics had more negative attitudes about condom use than blacks or whites. Whites had the most permissive, and blacks the least permissive, sexual attitudes. Hispanics felt least confident and blacks felt most confident about interpersonal sexual skills. Blacks were most likely to have had sexual intercourse, and whites least likely. Religiosity was found to be a significant intervening variable in the less permissive sexual attitudes of both blacks and Hispanics. The most significant implication of this study is that racial/ethnic differences in sexual behavior can be explained more fully by socio-environmental factors such as family structure or religiosity than by knowledge or attitudes. Thus, interventions directed toward minority populations should focus on the development of alternative social environments that would support more positive behaviors. More specifically, extended family, religious youth groups, and other community organizations should be brought into the I-IIV/AIDS risk-reduction arena.

O direito à prevenção da Aids em tempos de retrocesso: religiosidade e sexualidade na escola

“…Other studies using different methodologies show that having a religion influences opinions and experiences with sexuality [38][39][40][41][42] . These findings are similar to the results of our study, which show that greater frequency of participation in religious activities decreased the likelihood of sexual initiation at high school 37,[43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50] . Studies conducted in Africa have shown the opposite -that religiosity may actually increase the likelihood of sexual initiation at high school 51,52 -or that there was no association between religion and sexual initiation 53,54 .…”

Factors Influencing Change Behavior: Risk Reduction for Hiv Infection

“…Not only are Blacks and Hispanics at a disproportionate risk of contracting HIV (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1992), they are also less knowledgeable about behaviors that increase one's risk of contracting HIV/AIDS (Miller, Turner, & Moses, 1990). Perhaps the greater likelihood of Blacks compared with whites making a general change in behavior may be a result of the lack of accurate knowledge among Black people concerning factors that predict an increased likelihood of transmission (Langer, Zimmerman, & McNeal, 1992). Perhaps the more behaviors that Blacks mistakenly believe will reduce their risk of HIV infection, the greater their general change score.…”

Character as a Predictor of Reproductive Health Outcomes for Youth: A Systematic Review

“…There is insufficient evidence to generalize our finding for either prosocial norms or spirituality as protective factors to other races/ethnicities. [152,46,100,138,[159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173] 12 c [38,153,161,163,167,174,175] [122,155,[188][189][190][191][192][193][194] 6 c [123,155,162,193,195] Use of contraception 2 a [196] 1 a [196] 9 ab [15,24,124,125,158,196] 4 c [56,…”