Safe sexual intentions and behavior among heterosexuals and homosexual men: Testing the theory of reasoned action

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the relationships between norms, attitudes, intentions, and behavior proposed by the theory of reasoned action for safe sexual behavior. The research comprised two studies. The first was a study of condom use among heterosexual students (126 females and 99 males), while the second focused on whether heterosexuals (85 males and 85 females) and homosexual men (N = 82) from the general community engaged in the safe sex strategies they considered to be effective. Subjects first completed measures of past behavior, norms, attitudes, intentions, and then returned a follow-up measure of actual behavior after their next sexual encounter. Results indicated that intentions alone predicted behavior for all groups of subjects, and that past behavior predicted both intention and behavior. In addition, attitudes and norms significantly predicted intentions for the student sample and to some extent for the heterosexuals in the community sample, but did not predict the intentions of the homosexual men. Intentions, in general, mediated the influence of norms and attitudes on behavior, but did not mediate the influence of past behavior on subsequent behavior. These results support recent suggestions that the salience of norms and attitudes on intentions varies in different contexts, and that past behavior is a strong predictor of intentions and actual behavior. Author Notes This project was supported by a Commonwealth AIDS Research Grant from the Australian Department of Health, Housing, and Community Services. We would like to thank Anita Chauvin, Andrew Ede, Ruth Hills, Stephen Cox, and Louise Rodger for their help with data collection and analysis. We are also grateful to the Queensland AIDS Council and the Department of Psychology, The University of Queensland, for their support. Finally, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.