title: Prevalence and correlates of AIDS-risk behaviors among urban minority high school students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  To guide the development of an AIDS prevention program for urban minority high school students, the authors investigated the prevalence of AIDS-risk behaviors, and the relative explanatory power of demographic, contextual, and cognitive correlates of these behaviors, among black and Hispanic students in three New York City public high schools.
  
  
  METHODS
  A survey was administered to a randomly selected sample of classrooms in the 9th through 12th grades of three public academic high schools in a New York City borough. Survey participants (n = 926) were 59% black and 34% Hispanic; the mean age was 16.4 (sd 1.4) years.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Two-thirds of students reported having had sexual intercourse. Of the more than one-half of students who reported past-year intercourse, three-quarters had never or had inconsistently used condoms, one-third had multiple intercourse partners, one-tenth had a sexually transmitted disease, and one-twentieth had intercourse with a high-risk partner. Demographic (i.e., age, race/ethnicity) and contextual (i.e., academic failure, substance use, adverse life circumstances, cues to prevention) factors were most strongly associated with involvement in AIDS-risk behaviors; in contrast, cognitive factors (i.e., knowledge and beliefs about AIDS and AIDS-preventive actions) had little explanatory power.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Addressing demographic and contextual risk factors for involvement in AIDS-related behaviors may prove to be a more powerful AIDS-prevention strategy among adolescents than simply teaching facts about AIDS and fostering prevention-related beliefs.
authors.affiliation: Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY.
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Walter
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Vaughan
authors.forename: D F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Ragin
authors.forename: A T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Cohall
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kasen
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Fullilove
mesh_terms: D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006266:Health Education; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009519:New York City; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D014505:Urban Population