Interventions to Promote Risk Avoidance
and Reduction Decisions in Youth

A National Institute of Health project in collaboration with The University of Arizona

This 5-year study applies recent advances in cognitive-behavioral theory to attempt to increase the effectiveness of a multi-component intervention that promotes sexual abstinence and other risk reduction decisions in adolescents.

Phase I will investigate how youth formulate psychological representations of decision options, including their perceptions of the gist of decision options, risk estimates of problem behaviors, and relevant beliefs and attitudes. This information will be used to develop an intervention that is enhanced to optimize how it delivers information to adolescents.

In Phase II, students will be randomly assigned to a standard 15 hour sexual risk-reduction intervention, the “gist-based” enhancement of the intervention, or a comparison condition that teaches other relationship skills. A survey assessing sexual attitudes, values and behaviors will be given prior to the intervention, at the end of the intervention, and at three, six and twelve months following the intervention. The survey given is based on the survey developed by LeCroy & Milligan Associates, Inc. that is used in the evaluation of the Arizona Abstinence Only Until Marriage program, which will allow comparisons with that statewide database.