Sexual health information networks: What are urban African American youth learning?

Adolescence is a period of change, including changes in sexuality. The community, through family, peers, schools and medical professionals, offers a network of information sources that guide this developmental process. Given the importance of sexual development during adolescence, it is critical to understand the network of sources youth rely on for sexual information. The current qualitative study fills a gap in the literature by focusing on sexual health information networks (rather than on only one or two information sources) and by examining message content and utility in a sample of 15-17 year-old male and female African American adolescents (N=82) living in poor urban communities. We found that youth received information from a wide variety of sources (i.e., family, friends, boy/girlfriends, teachers/schools, medical personnel/clinics, religious sources, media, and the Internet) on many sexual health topics (i.e., birth control, condoms, STIs, sexual health, abstinence, sexual assertiveness, and number of sex partners). Messages from family and sex education were nearly universal and had the most utility, while messages from the Internet and religion had the least utility. Some differences in sources and message utility were found by gender and by sexual experience. Using case analyses we also identified four information network patterns (i.e, 1) rich and consistent, 2) sparse, 3) inconsistent, and 4) sex negative networks) suggesting considerable variation in the ways that youth are socialized regarding sex. Our findings suggest that the sexual information networks that youth are embedded within have the potential to impact their sexual health and development.