Attitudes, Norms, and the Influence of Parents and School-Based Adults on Adolescent Sexual Risk Intention

background: Risky sexual behaviors put adolescents are increased risk for adverse outcomes. Parents and other important adults can mitigate these outcomes through communication; this then influences adolescent attitudes and behaviors. The goal of this work was to understand the influence of parent-child sexual risk communication (SRC) on attitudes, perceived norms, and sexual risk intention and explore how support from school-based adults may moderate this relationship.

methods: Data from the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) was used to explore constructs from a family expansion of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Those who completed core high school survey, were 13 to 18 years old, and completed the sexual health supplement were included. Path analyses were conducted using MPlus.

results: Among the 21,731 adolescents, 65.9% endorsed abstinence, 40% perceived peers had engaged in sexual intercourse, and 50% reporting sex intentions. Greater SRC was associated with abstinence attitudes and receipt of adult social support. Abstinence attitude was negatively and perceived norms positively associated with sex intentions. Social support from a school-based adult had a strong protective influence on sexual intentions.

discussion: This work contributes to our understanding of the important role parents play in sexual socialization and highlights the added value of school-based adults.  It further highlights how testable theories can help explore large publically available datasets. Strategies to reduce risk behavior must include adolescents, their parents, along with peer norms and school connectedness; interventions targeting reductions will be most successful if they leverage adolescents’ relationships at multiple levels.