CORRELATES OF PARENT-CHILD CONCORDANCE IN SEXUAL ATTITUDES: DOES PARTICIPATION IN THE PARENTS MATTER! PROGRAM IMPROVE THIS AGREEMENT?

1 online resource (98 pages) : PDF

2009

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The sexual health of America's teens is a critical public health issue. Parents are ill-prepared and ill-equipped to fill the sexuality education gap facing today's teens. Understanding the most effective and efficient way to teach parents how to provide this education for their children is an important step in the development of a successful parent sexuality education curriculum. Using a study population of 9-11 year old African American children and their parents, this study first looked to determine the correlates of sexual attitude congruence between these parents and their children. Consistent with previous studies that focused on older Caucasian teens, this study found that parent-child communication and parent-child closeness (as reported by the child) were correlates of concordance in sexual attitudes. Parent-child dyads with higher scores on indices that measured sexual communication and closeness were more likely to agree on 8 questions about dating and sexual activity than those with lower scores. Once these correlates were identified, this study evaluated whether participation in a parent sexuality education curriculum (Parents Matter! Program) improved either the scores on these indices or improved agreement on the 8 aforementioned questions at 6 and 12 months post-intervention. While the difference of mean change analysis found that parents who participated in the Parents Matter! Program (full intervention) scored higher on the parent-child sexual communication index than the brief intervention or the control group at 6 and 12 months post-intervention, a multilevel analysis revealed no significant differences between the three groups. Finally, this study employed a multilevel analysis to determine if there were differences in levels of agreement on the 8 dating and sexual attitude questions between the three groups at 6 and 12 months post- intervention. One question out of 8 showed a clear dose-response relationship between participating in the Parents Matter! Program and higher odds of agreement.

doctoral dissertations

Public health
Health education
Families--Study and teaching

Ph.D.

Adolescent Sexual Health
Parent Sexuality Education
Teen Pregnancy

Health Services Research

Studnicki, James

Arif, Ahmed
Huber, Larissa
Langford, David
Culbreth, Jack

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2009.

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Bridger_uncc_0694D_10060

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:305