Book Description

Early adolescent sexual behaviors are often associated with contraception nonuse, unplanned pregnancies, and sexually transmitted infections. Determining the factors that are likely to influence an adolescent's early sexual debut would assist with identifying aspects of adolescents' environment that should be included in optimal prevention methods. In contrast to the typical assumption that a single set of vulnerability factors affect all adolescents, this research explored the possibility that there are different pathways, or different sets of factors, that contribute to early sexual behavior in different subgroups of adolescents. The current study used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) to perform traditional bivariate analyses to predict early sexual behaviors, as well as the more neoteric recursive partitioning, a classification tree method. The results of bivariate analyses (t-tests) confirmed several previously identified risk factors for early sexual behaviors: externalizing behaviors, early pubertal development, television viewing, depression, intelligence, school attachment, and family factors such as living arrangement. This study also identified new predictors (resistance to peer pressure, loneliness, and bonding with a teacher) that are linked to early sexual behaviors. The data also supported the use of Biosocial Models, the Problem Behavior Theory, and Social Control Theory for explaining early sexual behavior. Furthermore, the findings from the multivariate analyses (logistic regression and recursive partitioning) suggest that having friends who engage in risky behavior or engaging in risky behaviors oneself may be one of the most significant predictors of early sexual behaviors. However, recursive partitioning analyses suggest that family socioeconomic status (SES) attenuates this effect by showing reduced sexual behaviors among those with higher SES even when they have engaged in risky behaviors. Lastly, several subgroups of sexually active adolescents emerged, all arriving at the same outcome from different pathways, which shows evidence for equifinality. Overall, the findings of this study show that adolescent sexual development, while complex, is still explicable using complex analyses. Intervention methods should target multiple predictive factors, such as risk behaviors and family involvement, to decrease early sexual behaviors.