© 2007 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.073411
At the time of this study, Colleen DiIorio, Frances McCarty, Ken Resnicow, and Pamela Denzmore were with the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. Sally Lehr was with the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Emory University, Atlanta. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Colleen DiIorio, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Rd, NE, Rm 560, Atlanta, GA 30322 (e-mail: cdiiori{at}sph.emory.edu).
Objectives. We tested the efficacy of an intervention among 11- to 14-year-old adolescent boys to promote delay of sexual intercourse, condom use among those who were sexually active, and communication on sexuality between fathers (or father figures) and sons. Methods. Sites were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups. Assessments were conducted prior to the intervention and at 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-up interviews. Results. A total of 277 fathers and their sons completed baseline assessments. Most participants were African American, and most fathers lived with their sons. Significantly higher rates of sexual abstinence and condom use and of intent to delay initiation of sexual intercourse were observed among adolescent boys whose fathers participated in the intervention. Fathers in the intervention group reported significantly more discussions about sexuality and greater intentions to discuss sexuality than did control-group fathers. Conclusions. The study demonstrates that fathers can serve as an important educator on HIV prevention and sexuality for their sons.
Sexually active adolescents, particularly those who fail to use condoms every time they have sexual intercourse, are placing themselves at risk for contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The sex educational needs of middle and high school students have been recognized for many years, resulting in a number of excellent programs designed specifically for this age group.14 One gap in HIV prevention, however, has been the lack of involvement of parents in adolescent programs. Parents are often not aware of the information that is presented to their children and thus fail to reinforce important messages about HIV, STIs, and pregnancy prevention. More important, perhaps, is that parents are not adequately encouraged to talk with their children about sexual health. Several programs for parents and adolescents, particularly mothers and adolescent daughters, have been developed and tested.58 The evaluation of these programs has shown some promising results, including the increased involvement of parents in the sex education of their adolescents.7,912 However, effects on key behavioral indices such as initiation of sexual intercourse and the use of birth control or condoms have been less impressive.1012 Although identified as important, sex education designed specifically for adolescent boys has been lacking. Relatively few programs for adolescent boys are available, and of these, few have been evaluated. We report the results of an HIV prevention program designed to encourage communication between fathers (or father figures) and sons about HIV prevention behaviors. The primary aim of the study, called REAL Men (REAL=Responsible, Empowered, Aware, Living), was to test the efficacy of an intervention to promote the delay of sexual intercourse among 11- through 14-year-old adolescent boys as well as to encourage condom use among sexually active adolescents and improve communication about sexuality between fathers and sons.
Procedures This study was conducted in collaboration with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta, a community-based organization that provides after-school and summer programs primarily for disadvantaged children in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Seven sites were selected for participation in the research project. The sites were randomly assigned, with 4 sites assigned to the intervention group and 3 to the control group. The 2 smallest sites, serving similar neighborhoods and located within a 15-minute drive from each other, were combined and randomized as a unit.
Recruitment
Intervention Group The intervention, which consisted of seven 2-hour sessions for the fathers, was delivered once each week in a group format. Fathers attended the first 6 sessions alone, and fathers and sons attended the final session together. All sessions except the first began with a review of the previous session, a discussion of the take-home activities, and a review of personal goals set by study participants. Session content was delivered through a combination of lectures, discussions, role-plays, games, and videotapes. Participants were given a participant manual to assist with weekly take-home activities and adherence to personal goals set each week. The last session included a celebration of the end of the intervention in which fathers and sons received certificates of completion.
Control Group
Measures Adolescents who reported never having had sexual intercourse were asked which of the following described their intentions regarding sex: not to have sex until married, not to have sex until older, or would probably have sex within the next year. For the analysis, the last 2 categories were combined. Adolescents who reported having had sex were asked about their condom use and their intentions regarding condom use. They were asked to respond yes or no to the following questions: "Have you ever had sex without a condom?" "Have you ever used a condom when you had sex?" "Did you use a condom the last time you had sex?" and "Do you intend to use a condom the next time you have sex?"
A scale composed of a list of sex-specific topics measured sex-based communication between fathers and sons.5 Fathers responded to 16 items and sons to 13 items. Participants responded on a 0-to-3 rating scale, with 0 indicating they had not discussed the topic at all and 3 indicating that it had been discussed a lot. A sample item for fathers was, "Have you ever talked to your son about how he knows if he is ready to have sexual intercourse?" The automated interview substituted the adolescents first name for the term your son so that the information reported was specific to the adolescent enrolled in the study. Positive responses were summed to yield a total score ranging from 0 to 48 for fathers and 0 to 39 for sons. The Cronbach
Fathers were asked to indicate their intention regarding discussion of specific sexual topics. For each topic, fathers were asked how likely they thought it was that they would talk about the topic in the future. For each of the 16 items, the response categories ranged from 1 (definitely wont) to 5 (definitely will), for a possible total score ranging from 16 to 80. The Cronbach
Data Analyses
Description of Participants Of the approximately 2800 potential participants, 1700 were unreachable because of telephone problems (disconnected, wrong number). Initial contact was made with approximately 1100 families; 600 were identified as potentially eligible and approximately 400 agreed to complete the screening questionnaire. Of these families, 6 were determined to be ineligible, 12 actively declined to participate, and the remainder agreed to schedule a baseline interview. Of these, 277 fathers and their sons (total participants = 554) completed the baseline interview and enrolled in the study.
The adolescents ranged in age from 11 to 14 years (mean = 12.8 years, SD= 1.2 years), and fathers ranged in age from 18 to 80 (mean = 40.1 years, SD= 11.8 years). The majority of fathers and sons were African American (97%) and lived together (70%; Table 1
Session Attendance Session attendance was monitored for fathers in both the intervention and control groups. On average, fathers in the intervention group attended 45% of the sessions while fathers in the control group attended 44% of the sessions. A total of 221 fathers (80%) responded at all 4 assessments. Among those fathers not completing all assessments, 27 (10%) missed 1 follow-up, 12 (4%) missed 2, and 17 (6%) missed 3 of the 4 assessments. The number of participants from the 7 sites ranged from 28 to 72, with 4 being the maximum number of withdrawals from any 1 site. At each assessment period, the 2 study groups were roughly equal in size.
Primary Outcomes
The results of the analyses of outcomes for fathers and sons are reported in Tables 2
Our findings showed that involving fathers could be an effective means of promoting HIV prevention practices among adolescent males. The intervention appeared to have an effect on delay of sexual intercourse, because adolescents whose fathers attended the HIV sessions had higher rates of abstinence throughout the follow-up period. The overwhelming majority of adolescents in the study were African American, and among male high school students, African Americans have the highest rate of sexual intercourse of all racial/ethnic groups.18 Although the intervention demonstrated some success in reducing the initiation of sexual intercourse at 6-month follow-up, a more striking finding was the difference between the intervention and control groups in the proportion of sexually active adolescents who failed to use a condom each time they had sexual intercourse. These findings suggest that the program had an impact on promoting HIV prevention practices. The finding regarding condom use was noteworthy, because condom use was introduced and discussed in only 1 session, and no more emphasis was placed on this form of protection than on delaying initiation of sexual intercourse. It may be that abstinence was not an option for older adolescents, who were already engaging in sexual behaviors, but condom use was a viable preventive measure. If this is the case, offering the program to fathers whose sons are younger (aged 912 years) and less likely to be engaging in sexual behaviors may result in a higher proportion of adolescent boys who postpone sexual activity. Previous interventions assessing parentadolescent interventions have often failed to show an effect on adolescent sexual behaviors. For example, Miller et al.,11 who evaluated a home-based video sex education program, found that participants in the treatment group were no more likely to delay sexual intercourse than those in the control group. School-based studies, such as those by Blake et al.10 and Levy et al.,12 that included a parent component also found no differences between treatment and control groups in the delay of sexual involvement. Likewise, a variety of community-based programs designed for parents and adolescents failed to demonstrate differences in the rates of sexual intercourse of adolescent participants.9,19,20 One possible explanation for the difference in outcomes between our study and previous research is the involvement of fathers in the current program. Although many of the previously mentioned programs included both parents, more mothers tended to participate in the programs than fathers, and some were limited to mothers and daughters. The results of the present study suggest that messages on HIV prevention delivered by the father can carry significant weight. The fathers mere attendance at the program may have also impressed on the son the fathers concern for his well-being and the importance of HIV prevention practices. Our findings demonstrate the efficacy of public health interventions in which parents are the primary target in addition to those in which they play a supportive role. The findings related to abstinence and intimate behaviors suggested that the program had a significant short-term effect in delaying the initiation of sexual intercourse and behaviors that lead to it; however, the long-term efficacy of the program in promoting abstinence was not observed. The program lasted 7 weeks and did not include booster sessions. Booster sessions or follow-up meetings over the course of the year might have been helpful in reminding fathers to talk with their sons; they should be considered for future fatherson programs.
Limitations The intervention was only 7 weeks long. Many fathers recommended that the intervention be lengthened to include several more sessions. Because many fathers have never talked to their sons about sexual issues, fathers may need more time to develop skills for such discussions. On the other hand, despite an excellent retention rate90% of participants completed 3 or more assessmentson average, fathers participated in fewer than half of the sessions. Given the fact that many fathers did not receive the full intervention, the results of the study are fairly impressive. The low attendance rate suggests that fewer rather than more sessions might be necessary to retain some participants. One strategy could be to decrease the number of sessions while increasing the length of each session. Finally, only 6 sites (3 for each group) were selected for the study. Current thinking on group-randomized trials suggests that more sites should be randomized to each group.21
Conclusions
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health (grant 5 R01 MH59010). We acknowledge the collaboration of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta in conducting this study. We appreciate the assistance of the staff and the contributions of the participants who enrolled in the study.
Human Participant Protection
Peer Reviewed
Contributors Accepted for publication May 9, 2006.
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