AIDS RISK REDUCTION FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE YOUTH

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As AIDS has diffused into a broader range of populations which differ by gender, race-ethnicity, and level of acculturation, much of what has been learned about AIDS prevention in the more homogenous, white gay male community must be reexamined as we confront a barrier of true diversity which will require specialized strategies for reaching many distinct cultural groups. Although much emphasis has been placed on the coming out" process in research on gay male adolescents, far less attention has been directed to the fact that these adolescents "come out" from radically different cultures of origin. They start with quite different knowledge related to sex which is not only heterosexually oriented but also ethnic-specific. In spite of dramatic racial-ethnic differences in seroprevalence rates, insufficient research has been conducted looking at risk in racial-ethnic subsets of the gay male adolescent population. We hypothesize that sociocultural knowledge (concepts and strategies related to social behavior shared by a community) plays an important role in generating intentions which facilitate or interfere with health related behaviors. In this two year study, we propose to use the Theory of Reasoned Action to develop measures of salient social behavior intentions (SBI) in the African American gay male youth community. We will then examine which SBI are associated with risky sexual behaviors. Such measures will become predictor variables to use in quantitative research to investigate antecedents of high risk sexual practices in this population, which in turn will inform the design of interventions. The first specific aim of the study is to conduct grounded theory analysis of field note and transcript data, producing a set of anthropological models of African American gay male adolescent sociocultural knowledge related to sex. This aim includes transcription of a subset of interview data, development of a category system, coding of data, and text analysis. The second specific aim of the study is to develop scales of social behavior intentions (SBI) of African American gay male youth and to evaluate the relation of SBI to risky sexual behavior. This aim includes development of items for the most salient SBI for African American gay male adolescents, construction of scales of these SBI, testing the reliability of these scales, testing the validity of these scales against other scales related to social behavior, and testing the ability of these scales to predict risky sexual behavior. This study, will complete preparatory research which could allow design AIDS risk reduction interventions for gay male African American adolescents and test a theoretical approach which could be applied to other populations.