Adolescent Sexual Risk Behaviors and Out of School Relationships

Kate W. Strully, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)
David P. Kennedy, RAND Corporation

A handful of recent studies show that adolescents are less likely to use of condoms and other contraceptives when partners are discordant on selected characteristics. For instance, when adolescents date individuals who do not attend their school, they are more likely to engage in unprotected sex and school-discordant relationships are positively associated with STIs. However, we have little understanding of why risky sexual behaviors are more common when adolescent relationships are school-discordant. Using dyadic-level data from the first and second waves of the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study attempts to shed light on these issues by investigating two questions: First, to what extent are the associations between school discordance and riskier sexual behaviors driven by adolescents with higher likelihoods of engaging in unprotected sex differentially selecting out-of-school partners? And, second, what characteristics of out-of-school relationships mediate remaining associations between school discordance and riskier sexual behaviors?