The Direct and Indirect Effects of Social Capital on HIV/STI Risk Behaviors Among Urban Adolescents

Introduction: HIV/STI among adolescents remains a major public health concern in the United States. Indeed, adolescence represents a developmental period characterized by, among other things, increased risk taking. For example, adolescents disproportionately engage in HIV risk behaviors, including past 90-day unprotected sex, number of lifetime sexual partners, having more than one sexual partner in the past 90-days, and having drunk alcohol before last sexual intercourse. In spite of this, few studies have examined the role of social capital, including civic engagement, adult and community support, on HIV risk behaviors in adolescents. Even less is known with respect to the indirect effects of social capital on HIV risk behaviors through self-efficacy. The purpose of this study was to examine the direct and indirect effects of social capital, including adult and community support and civic engagement on HIV risk behaviors in urban adolescents.

Methods: The data were drawn from an ongoing study on social media and reproductive rights among adolescents in Denver (Grant#). A total of 200 adolescents were included in this study. The majority of participants were female (57.2%), 43.2% identified as Hispanic/Latino, and a mean age= 17.4 (SD= 1.7).  Adolescents completed self-report measures to assess recent sexual risk behaviors, civic engagement, adult and community support. Additionally, adolescents completed measures to assess communication and refusal efficacy. CFA were conducted to examine the feasibility of collapsing each indicator of social capital onto a latent construct. SEM was used to examine the effects of social capital on HIV/STI risk behaviors.

Results: CFA findings indicate that all three indicators of social capital loaded significantly onto a single latent construct and model fit indices also suggest a good fit (SRMR= 0.065, and RMSEA= 0.06).SEM analysis indicate that higher levels of social capital are directly associated with higher levels of sex communication efficacy (β = 0.75, p < .001) and higher levels of sex refusal efficacy (β =  0.49, p < .001). Higher levels of sex refusal efficacy is also directly and negatively associated with having had drunk sex (β = -0.33, p = .02), and number of sex partners in the past 90-days (β = -0.56, p < .001). Additionally, social capital had an indirect effect on number of sex partners in the past 90-days through sex refusal efficacy (β = -0.28, -p=0.04).

Conclusions: Relatively few studies examining the direct and indirect effects of social capital on HIV risk behaviors among adolescents exist. Study findings indicate that social capital, including civic engagement, adult and community support, may play an important role in ameliorating HIV risk behaviors. Future research should examine whether these findings hold true in a longitudinal multivariate design.