The proposed research will add an explicit emotion construct to a traditional social cognitive model of HIV risk and prevention behavior; and further, develop and rigorously test an intervention component that will address emotional influences on risky sexual behavior in addition to traditional social cognitive constructs. HIV is a public health issue in the U.S. and globally that has been modeled using mainly social cognitive models. However, sexual activity is an emotionally charged behavior, and social cognitive models fail to take emotional components of the behavior explicitly into account.
Specific aim 1 will validate emotion as a separate construct in the 1MB model, a representative social cognitive model of health behavior change.
Specific aim 2 will develop and pilot an emotion intervention component, based on elicitation in specific aim 1, which can be added to an established 1MB model intervention. The emotion component will be based on techniques intended to facilitate understanding of experienced emotions (emotional education) in order to aid adaptive responses to these emotions in sexual situations (emotional competence).
Specific aim 3 will statistically test an intervention including the emotion component and traditional 1MB model components against a traditional 1MB model intervention and a no intervention control. The model validation and intervention assessment will be conducted in young adults, a population who engages in particularly risky sexual behavior. Adding an explicit emotion construct to the model will help researchers to determine more precisely what emotions should be addressed in sexual contexts, and will inform researchers to create an intervention for risky sex that addresses emotions in addition to 1MB components. This is relevant to public health because it has the potential to yield an intervention that is more effective than interventions currently used to change risky sexual behavior in populations at risk for HIV. If an intervention addressing emotion in addition to social cognitive constructs is more effective than a traditional social cognitive intervention, this has important implications for the development of interventions in the field of health behavior change. ? ? ?
| Ferrer, Rebecca A; Fisher, Jeffrey D; Buck, Ross et al. (2011) Pilot test of an emotional education intervention component for sexual risk reduction. Health Psychol 30:656-60 |
| Ferrer, Rebecca A; Huedo-Medina, Tania B; Johnson, Blair T et al. (2011) Exercise interventions for cancer survivors: a meta-analysis of quality of life outcomes. Ann Behav Med 41:32-47 |
