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Perceived Risks of HIV/AIDS and First Sexual Intercourse among Youth in Cape Town, South Africa

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Abstract

The ‘Health Belief Model’ (HBM) identifies perception of HIV/AIDS risks, recognition of its seriousness, and knowledge about prevention as predictors of safer sexual activity. Using data from the Cape Area Panel Survey (CAPS) and hazard models, this study examines the impact of risk perception, considered the first step in HIV prevention, set within the context of the HBM and socio-economic, familial and school factors, on the timing of first sexual intercourse among youth aged 14–22 in Cape Town, South Africa. Of the HBM components, female youth who perceive their risk as ‘very small’ and males with higher knowledge, experience their sexual debut later than comparison groups, net of other influences. For both males and females socio-economic and familial factors also influence timing of sexual debut, confirming the need to consider the social embeddedness of this sexual behavior as well as the rational components of decision making when designing prevention programs.

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Notes

  1. Wave 2 of CAPS was divided into waves 2A and 2B where sub-samples were followed. Using wave 2 would mean are not able to follow the whole sample. In addition, Wave 2 did not collect the same information as found in Wave 1. Thus, wave 2 was not useful for this study.

  2. The fifth category, ‘undecided’, is made up of 66 respondents (5% of the sample) who reported they did not know about their risk perception. To avoid losing information, we retained a category of ‘undecided’ rather than treating them as missing.

  3. We can use ordinal variables in LISREL and the package uses the polychoric correlations which are more appropriate for categorical ordinal variables.

  4. AIC (Akaike Information Criterion), a statistic proposed by Akaike (1974) is used for judging the best fitting parametric model. AIC is defined as –2 (log likelihood) + 2 (k + c) where k is the number of model covariates and c is the number of the number of model-specific distributional parameters. According to Akaike (1974), the best fitting model is the one with the lowest AIC statistic.

  5. Note that these variables are categorized only for the bivariate analysis. In the multivariate analysis they are analysed as continuous variables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, N6A 5C2

    Eric Y. Tenkorang & Fernando Rajulton

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada, N9B 3P4

    Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale

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  1. Eric Y. Tenkorang
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Tenkorang, E.Y., Rajulton, F. & Maticka-Tyndale, E. Perceived Risks of HIV/AIDS and First Sexual Intercourse among Youth in Cape Town, South Africa. AIDS Behav 13, 234–245 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-008-9470-5

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