Montana is proud to have completed over three decades of participation in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). These results are valuable to educators, school boards, and communities, including parents and students, in understanding the health risks of Montana students, enabling districts to design local health and physical education curriculum…

This paper offers a review of school-based sexuality and relationship education as it relates to gender and sexual minority (GSM) students. Framed by a queer theory lens, the paper examines four main topics: (a) sexual health and relationship risks for GSM youth, (b) comprehensive school-based sexuality education as a protective factor for sexual…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS) has a long history of providing representative data on the nation's high school students. These assessments are crucial to CDC's mission of identifying health behaviors and experiences; understanding the determinants and co-occurrence of risks;…

Although only contributing approximately 12% to the United States population, Black Americans account for the majority (51%) of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in this country. Black women in college between the ages of 18 and 24 fall directly in the center of these alarming statistics. These young women are faced with the psychosocial manifestations of…

Forming implementation intentions (i.e. action plans that specify when, where and how a person will act) could be effective in promoting condom use on a large scale. However, the technique implies that people are able to form high quality implementation plans that are likely to induce behaviour change. Young single females, aged 16-30 years old,…

Limited research has captured the wide varieties of distinct, but interrelated, life stressors that young men who have sex with men (YMSM) experience as emerging adults. We examined the way recent experiences of a diverse set of stressors predict illicit drug use, alcohol misuse, and inconsistent condom use (i.e., unprotected anal intercourse)…

This study examined what kinds of sexual scripts were found in Finnish girls' narratives, what elements those scripts included and how different scripts were associated with sexually risky behavior. The data were comprised of the narratives of 173 14-15-year-old girls regarding their experiences in sexually motivating situations. The narratives…

Objectives: To examine the impact of downward social comparison and the "known partner is a safe partner" heuristic on college students' sexual decisions. Participants: One hundred-eighty heterosexual or bisexual undergraduate college students. Methods: Participants read dating vignettes that varied on perspective and familiarity and then rated…

Emergency contraception is most effective at preventing unintended pregnancy when taken as early as possible following unprotected sexual intercourse. Advance provision of this medication supports more timely and effective use. In the midst of rising teen pregnancy rates, current policies often limit access to emergency contraception for…

Objective: To examine sexual health disparities between blacks and whites in a national sample of US college students. Participants and Method Summary: Analyses utilized secondary data from 44,165 nonmarried undergraduates (aged 18-24; M = 20.1) responding to the Spring 2007 American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment;…

The purpose of this article was to determine opinions on the use of abstinence only versus comprehensive sex education by registered voters in South Carolina. A cross-sectional, random-digit dial sample was utilized. Approximately 81% of respondents indicated support for sex education that emphasizes abstinence but also teaches about the benefits…

Since 1997 the federal government has invested more than $1.5 billion dollars in abstinence-only programs--proven ineffective programs which censor or exclude important information that could help young people protect their health. In fact, until recently, programs which met a strict abstinence-only definition were the only type of sex education…

Theories of preventive health behavior posit that perceived vulnerability to health threats motivates self-protective behavior. Fifteen years after an initial study of college students' perceptions of their vulnerability to HIV, a replication was conducted on the same campus in 2005. Comparisons between cohorts on vulnerability judgements were…

Teens typically fail to use contraceptives consistently, which contributes to high rates of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among this age group. Existing research has focused primarily on how teens' own characteristics are related to contraceptive use, but has paid less attention to how the characteristics of…

Youth internal assets and external resources are protective factors that can help youth avoid potentially harmful behaviors. This study investigates how the relationship between youth assets or resources and two sexual risk behaviors (ever had sex and birth control use) varied by gender. Data were collected through in-home interviews from…