Session: Understanding Contexts and Patterns of Risk Behaviors Among South African Adolescents (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

The three papers in this symposium focus on a population at great risk for substance abuse, HIV/AIDs, and sexual violence: South African adolescents living in impoverished and under-resourced locations.  Each paper addresses the role of environmental and contextual factors that promote or reduce risk as well as patterns and the co-morbidity of risk and protective factors. Collectively and individually, these papers provide insight that will inform prevention efforts as well as policy development.

Paper 1, “Through the Lens: South African Adolescents’ Perceptions of Free-time, Boredom and Risk,” uses a photo-elicitation technique to understand how leisure boredom and risk behavior are described by youth. Understanding the context of risk and boredom through photos and discussions with youth provides a great deal of insight into how prevention efforts might be better designed to reach a group of extremely vulnerable youth. The findings have direct policy implications regarding environmental factors that may decrease risk. Furthermore, these findings contribute to a greater understanding of the role of boredom as a risk factor, which will in turn contribute to intervention efforts.

Paper 2, “Assessing the Influence of Healthy Leisure on South African Adolescent Substance Use Trajectories: A Growth Mixture Modeling Approach,” provides insight into the influence of healthy leisure on patterns of substance use development. This paper contributes to prevention efforts by identifying particular leisure skills that, if learned in early adolescence, may prevent subsequent substance abuse in later years. Helping youth learn positive leisure skills may prevent negative leisure experiences, such as boredom, which are connected to risk behavior among adolescents.

Paper 3, “Characteristics and Tactics of Perpetrators of Sexual Coercion among South Africa Youth: Attempting and Succeeding,” offers insight into the issue of sexual coercion among South African youth.  Understanding contexts and patterns of sexual coercion is virtually unexplored to date in this population, and this paper offers unique and compelling data that will begin to help better understand how to prevent sexual coercion. Furthermore, this paper distinguished between attempted sexual coercion that is successful versus that which is not.

A discussant will describe ways these papers contribute to prevention and policy efforts.