Effectiveness of Mother Daughter Risk Reduction Intervention: Evaluation seven month after post test

HIV infection adversely affects African American female adolescents. In a longitudinal quasi-experimental design, we compared the mother/daughter HIV risk reduction intervention (MDRR) to the mother/daughter health promotion intervention (MDHP) and the health expert HIV risk reduction (HERR) intervention at time point 3, approximately 7 months after the immediate post-test. Outcome variables were sexual activity, HIV transmission knowledge, self-efficacy to refuse sex, intention to refuse sex, condom attitudes, condom self-efficacy, and intention to use condom. We hypothesized that compared to MDHP and HERR girls, MDRR girls would have significantly better scores on outcome variables. The sample was 240 low-income African American female adolescents, ranging in age from 11-14. One-way ANOVAs and contrast tests revealed that HERR girls had more positive condom attitudes and greater HIV transmission knowledge than MDRR and MDHP girls. While there was no significant difference in report of having sex among the groups, six MDRR girls, 11 HERR girls, and 12 MDHP girls reported having sex. MDHP girls also had the lowest scores on five of the seven outcome variables. Logistic regression revealed that girls who have lower intention to refuse sex were more likely to report being sexually active. Multiple regression revealed that intention to use condoms was positively related to their self-efficacy to use condoms. The overall pattern for MDRR effectiveness indicates that it is moving toward significance and has some positive effects on sexual behavior. To enhance MDRR effectiveness, more efforts have to be exerted to support mothers as their daughters' HIV risk reduction educators.