How communication about STI status affects sexual behavior decision-making

Background: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are a major public health concern. While testing has been proven as an important individual behavior, overall research fails to thoroughly investigate how testing practices affect safe sex behavior. This research serves to bridge these gaps by investigating how STI conversations impact subsequent sexual behavior. Method: Data for this research comes from an online questionnaire conducted April-May 2012. Mixed method data was analyzed from 181 participants, mainly women (79.6% and 20.4% men), with a mean age of 26. The majority of the sample was white (82.3%) and heterosexual (79.6%). Results: The majority of participants had received an STI test (77.3%), but approximately 45.1% of the participants were unsure what they had been tested for. During the last 6 months, the majority of participants had never discussed with their partner how to use a condom (45.7%), how to prevent HIV (65.9%), nor how to prevent STIs (48.6%), even though the majority of participants reported being very comfortable talking about these topics. Of those who did not talk about STIs with their partner, 62.9% then engaged in vaginal sex without a condom and 46.6% engaged in vaginal sex with a condom. After discussing STI status, 67.3% of participants then had vaginal sex without a condom and 48.1% had vaginal sex without a condom. Future research will compare between those who did and did not communication about STIs. Conclusion: This research project has the potential to impact public health recommendations around testing in relation to partner transmission.