Sexual behavior among Puerto Rican adolescents

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study is to compare the prevalence of several types of sexual behaviors among Puerto Rican adolescents living in New York City and in the Greater San Juan Metropolitan Area of Puerto Rico.

Background: There is a scarcity of literature about sexual behaviors among Hispanic adolescents. The available literature has several limitations.

Methods: The data for the analysis was collected through personal interviews in two high schools, one in Puerto Rico and the other in New York City as part of multi-site Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study.

Results: To test whether the adolescent sexual behavior varied by site and more specifically to determine whether the Puerto Rican youngsters surveyed in New York are more sexually experienced, as measured by a sexual involvement scale, a set-wise hierarchical multiple regression/correlation (MRC) analysis was done. It showed that the sexual involvement behavior of Puerto Rican students in N.Y. was higher that the involvement of students surveyed in Puerto Rico even when controlling by gender, age, mother's education and household composition.

Conclusion: Variations in the sexual behavior of Puerto Rican adolescents living in two socio-cultural environments (New York City and Greater San Juan in Puerto Rico) were documented. Differences were observed both in the patterns of sexual experiences reported in the two sites in the higher levels of sexual experience reported in the New York sample. The documented differences have important implications for the development of interventions for HIV/STD prevention strategies.