Adolescent Sexual Behavior

Abstract

Despite numerous studies on adolescent sexuality, few use coherent theoretical models and multivariate analyses on data from high school students. This study tested a social-learning model for its ability to explain adolescent sexual intercourse from a multivariate approach. Data weregathered from 1,610 high school studentsfrom private schools. Findings indicated that all eight of the theoretical variables were significantly correlated with sexual frequency in the bivariate analysis and five of the eight variables explained 40% of the variance in the multivariate analysis. Peer differential association was found to be the best predictor of adolescent sexual frequency. The other variables, in order of importance, were reinforcement balance, overall reinforcement, positive/negative definitions, law-abiding/law-violating behavior, modeling, parents' reaction, and techniques of neutralization. The following control variables also were significantly associated: drug use, religiosity, closeness to father, closeness to mother, academic performance, and gender.