The objective of the proposed five- year project is to develop, implement, and evaluate a """"""""high dosage"""""""" school- based, theory-guided intervention program--integrated within an existing high school health education curriculum--aimed at preventing or reducing risk behaviors related to infection with HIV and contraction of AIDS within a tri- ethnic adolescent population living in a high-risk environment. Guided by a theoretical causal model, the researchers will:(1) conduct a pre- intervention, cross-sectional survey of a representative sample (n=3000) of 9th through 12th grade Black, Hispanic, and White students within the project's target area in order to determine the AIDS-risk behaviors, related cognitive-psychosocial behavioral factors, and perspective necessary to develop the contents of the intervention; (2) develop, implement, and evaluate --utilizing the target assessment provided by the survey and focused interviews--an AIDS-risk prevention intervention integrated within the existing health education curriculum as mandated by the Texas State Education Agency; (3) test a series of hypotheses relating to the intervention's effects on various AIDS-risk cognitions and behaviors; and (4) test the theoretical causal model by determining the relationships within it of psychosocial mediator and moderator variables as related to outcomes of the intervention. The longitudinal phase of the project will involve three successive ninth grade cohorts of male and female Black, Hispanic, and White students as they progress through to the twelfth grade. Participating in the project will be five """"""""test condition"""""""" high schools (n=7600) and three """"""""wait-list"""""""" control high schools (n=5400) in three geographically contiguous school districts in the northeast Houston metropolitan area. The effects of the intervention will be estimated through variance and/or discriminant function analyses; the model will be tested through the application of structural equation methods. The intervention (high dosage through each year of the investigation to decrease the probability of """"""""washout"""""""" of effects) is expected to provide accurate information concerning AIDS-risk behaviors, dispel misconceptions, present strategies for resisting pressures to engage in these risky behaviors, and affect positively cognitive-psychosocial states hypothesized to decrease the probability of such behaviors.
| Colon, R M; Wiatrek, D E; Evans, R I (2000) The relationship between psychosocial factors and condom use among African-American adolescents. Adolescence 35:559-69 |
