The broad objective of the proposal is to effect positive changes in adolescents' health protection, health promotion, decision-making and assertiveness practices and through them to promote better health of mother and newborn.
Specific aims are to: test the effects of a nursing intervention on the practices specified; school progression, newborn length of gestation, birth weight and delay of subsequent pregnancy; and to determine the relative strength of contextual and personal variables in explaining variations in outcomes by ethnic/racial (E/R) groups. A randomized trial of the intervention will be used with 880 experimental and 240 control Ss from Afro-Anglo- and Mexican-American populations drawn from eight sites in Texas. Sites are diverse, providing E/R diversity and the recruitment of Ss from rural vs urban areas. Standardized instruments and measuring procedures will be used, in general, with additional pre-testing on the populations of interest to re-assess reliability and validity. Analyses of variance and multiple regression techniques will be used to test effects and profile the impact of factors in each E/R group.
