Systematic investigations of youth in rural America are rare; even rarer are systematic studies of African American youth living in these areas. In the proposed study we bring our experiences in conducting research on resilience and competence with rural African American families to a study of family processes and social and environmental contexts that deter the onset of sexual activity, unsafe sexual practices, and decrease adolescents' vulnerability to the escalation of alcohol and other substance use. A significant proportion of rural African American families are at risk for unemployment, low wages, low educational levels, and substandard housing. These challenges confronting them are especially significant because of the lack of facilities, amenities, and services to which many urban African American families commonly have access (Orthner, 1986). Linkages between economic instability and risk taking among youth have been established in other studies (Alexander & Klassen, 1988; Brody et al., 1997; Fullilove et at., 1990). The proposed empirically based multicomponent prevention program, designed to reduce risk taking behaviors, will consist of 400 families with an 11-year-old target child. Half of the families will be assigned randomly to a prevention group and the other half with be assigned to a minimal contact control group. Pre-intervention, post-intervention, and follow-up assessments of key study constructs and of youths' sexual risk taking and alcohol and other substance use will be administered to the entire sample. Data will be obtained from mothers, fathers, extended family caregivers in single-mother families, target children, target's oldest sibling, the children's friend, and the children's teachers. The proposed research and prevention program will incorporate the following predictors: (1) family and parenting predictors, (2) adolescent ethnic identity and sexual self-concept; (3) adolescent competencies; and (4) cognitive antecedents of adolescent risk behavior, such as formation of prototypes of youth who engage in risky behaviors. This multiwave research design will allow the investigators to determine which intervention components of the prevention program contribute most to the intervention's overall effectiveness and to explore the mediational processes through which these components operate.
