Supportive relationships and sexual risk behavior in adolescence: an ecological-transactional approach.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the longitudinal associations between supportive relationships with friends and parents and sexual risk behavior in adolescence based on an ecological-transactional perspective.


METHODS
Analyses were conducted on 2,652 sexually active adolescents from the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).


RESULTS
African-American adolescents had lower risk for sexual risk behavior. Supportive friendships and parent connectedness interacted in predicting decreased likelihood of sexual risk behavior. Mother-child communication about sex contributed to decreased likelihood of sexual risk only for girls. There were also small reciprocal effects of sexual risk behavior on decreased relationship quality over time.


CONCLUSIONS
To better understand the parents' role in adolescent sexual risk behavior, multiple facets of parenting, the social contexts of parenting and adolescents' peers, and the effects of adolescents' behavior on these relationships should be taken into consideration.
Henrich
Christopher C
CC
Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, PO Box 5010, Atlanta, Georgia 30302, USA. chenrich@gsu.edu
Brookmeyer
Kathryn A
KA
Shrier
Lydia A
LA
Shahar
Golan
G
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D016015:Logistic Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012944:Social Support; D014481:United States