Fellowship ForumPartner condom use among adolescent girls with sexually transmitted diseases
Section snippets
Methods
Sexually active adolescent girls with gonorrheal or chlamydial cervicitis, or who were admitted with pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) at a large, urban children’s hospital, were invited to complete the questionnaire. A total of 64% of patients of the adolescent clinic are female, 40% are black, 14% are Latino, 30% are white, and 16% are of other race/ethnicity; they range in age from 10 to 25 years.
Exclusion criteria were inability to read English and pregnancy. Girls who were pregnant were
Results
The demographic characteristics and sexual history data are shown in Table 1. The majority of the sample was Black or Hispanic. Participants had been sexually active for a mean of 2.8 (±2.2) years. Median number of sexual partners in lifetime was three. Sixty-four percent of participants reported one sexual partner in the past 3 months; three participants reported no recent partners. While the majority of the sample reported using condoms with high frequency, only 41% used condoms with last
Discussion
Multiple cognitive, behavioral, and psychosocial determinants are involved in condom use among adolescents. This study explored the relevant factors in a population of adolescents at particular risk for HIV and other STDs, female youth who have already acquired an STD. Consistent with constructs from Social Cognitive Theory and previous research in clinic and school populations, female adolescents with STDs who were younger, had fewer lifetime sexual partners, and had no history of a prior STD
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease Control, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and Project No. MCJ-MA259195 from the Maternal-Child Health Bureau (Title V, Social Security Act), Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources.
This research was presented in part at the North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology annual meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 5, 1997, and the Ambulatory Pediatric
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2005, Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent GynecologyCitation Excerpt :The importance of negotiating condom use for sexual risk behavior has been demonstrated in other studies.25,33 For example, a study by Shrier et al. found that girls who had used a condom had greater ability to negotiate condom use.25 Our results suggest the value of both parent and formal sources of reproductive health education in promoting condom use negotiation skills.