Description) A recent randomized controlled trial has demonstrated the efficacy of Be Proud! Be Responsible! abstinence-based and safer-sex curricula with young inner-city African American adolescents in Philadelphia, PA. The proposed research is designed to replicate and extend that study and to test the generalizability of the interventions across several dimensions, including ethnicity of participants (African American vs. Latino), ethnicity of facilitator (African American vs. Latino), ethnic specificity of intervention (African American vs. Latino), and type of outcome measure (self-reported behavior vs. Clinically documented sexually transmitted diseases). The investigators will also extend previous findings by testing whether the intervention effects are sustained through a 36-month follow-up. They will randomly assign 756 6th and 7th grade African American and Latino adolescents from the Newark, NJ area to one of three interventions: an abstinence-based intervention that emphasizes the importance of delaying or curtailing sexual intercourse until an appropriate time later in life; a safer-sex intervention that stresses the importance of using condoms if they have sexual intercourse; and a general health intervention that serves as a control and is focused, not on AIDS and STD, but on other diseases, including heart disease, hypertension, and cancer that are affected by behavior. Orthogonal to this, they will randomly vary whether the facilitator is African American or Latino. In addition, they will randomize Latino participants to receive a Latino-adapted version of the interventions or the original interventions that were developed for African Americans. The primary outcome measures are self-reported frequency of unprotected sexual intercourse, sexual intercourse, and condom use. Secondary outcome measures include sexually transmitted infections based on ligase-chain reaction tests on urine specimens and theoretically relevant variables hypothesized to mediate intervention effects, including intentions, beliefs, and self- efficacy. Researchers blind to the participants' intervention condition will collect the data pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention and at 3-, 6- 12-, 24-, and 36-month follow-ups. Finally, the investigators will analyze the data using analyses of covariance, planned contrasts, multiple regression, and logistic regression. The results of this project will contribute to the scientific knowledge regarding the generalizability of HIV risk-reduction interventions found to be effective with young inner-city adolescents.
| Bell, Stephanie G; Newcomer, Susan F; Bachrach, Christine et al. (2007) Challenges in replicating interventions. J Adolesc Health 40:514-20 |
