title: 'Behold, a virgin is with HIV!' misreporting sexual behavior among infected adolescents.
abstract: In four Southern African countries where the HIV prevalence rate is among the highest in the world, 46.4% of a sample of female adolescents infected with HIV report having never engaged in sex. This would indicate either the dominance of non-sexual modes of HIV transmission or rampant misreporting of sexual behavior in the sample. We propose a method to estimate the extent of misreporting and calculate that the true percentages of virgins among the sample of HIV-infected adolescent women is 32.1%. After accounting for misreporting, the contribution of sexual modes of HIV transmission is projected as 50.4%, compared with an estimate of 35.5% if we assume no misreporting.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, USA.
authors.forename: Vidhura
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Tennekoon
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rosenman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D017954:Africa South of the Sahara / Q000453:epidemiology; D000367:Age Factors; D008192:Deception; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology* / Q000635:transmission; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D057566:Self Report / Q000592:standards; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: C39; C51; HIV transmission mode; I10; I18; O55; misclassification; partial observability; pre‐marital sex; sub‐Saharan Africa