HIV Risk Behavior in Out-of-school Rural African American Young Adults

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent epidemiological evidence indicates that the risk of contracting HIV is increasing among African American young adults living in the rural South. African American communities in rural Georgia are characterized by chronic unemployment and poverty along with a dearth of health and educational resources. Young adults in these communities face significant barriers to adequate employment and higher education. Many respond to this lack of opportunity and the resulting economic pressure by engaging in high-risk behavior, including substance use and unprotected sexual activity. Although young adults attending higher education have been studied extensively, barriers to obtaining valid samples have prevented empirical research on the risk and protective factors that affect rural African American young adults who do not attend college. The research proposed in this R-21 application addresses the public health need to develop new approaches to obtaining valid samples of hard-to-reach members of populations at risk for HIV and substance use and to identify the protective factors that dissuade them from engaging in high risk behaviors. The objectives of this study are to (1) test the feasibility of Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) for obtaining a sample of rural African American young adults age 18-21 who are out of school and living in resource- poor, rural environments, and (2) evaluate a model of the personal, interpersonal, and socioeconomic factors that explain high-risk sexual behavior among these young people. RDS is a novel technique that combines "snowball sampling" with a mathematical model that weights the sample to compensate for its non-random nature. RDS will be used to obtain a sample of 240 rural African American young adults. Data will be gathered to evaluate a heuristic model that includes the following predictors: socioeconomic and personal stressors; the negative emotions these stressors induce; support and socialization from prosocial adults; intrapersonal protective processes, including a future orientation, self-regulation, emotion regulation, and racial identity; affiliations with risk-taking peers and sexual partners; and antecedents of HIV-related risk behavior, such as behavioral intentions and attitudes toward sexually protective behaviors.