According to the 2002 National Survey for Family Growth, every year more than two and a half million teenagers become sexually active, accounting for nearly half of all high school students. Moreover, many of these teens engage in sexual behavior without adequate knowledge or education about the consequences of unsafe sexual activity. As such, family scientists, educators, policymakers and health professionals, alike, have attempted to determine factors that contribute to teenagers awareness and perception of sex and sexual risks factors, including contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, and unplanned pregnancies.
One factor that may contribute to teenagers motivation to engage in risky sexual behaviors is the level of comfort parents have in communicating with their children about sex and sex-related topics. In order to investigate the effect that Parental Comfort in Sex-Related Communication has on Teenage Motivation to Engage in Risky Sexual Behavior, data will be examined from the Add Health data set. Specifically, the parent-teen relationship will be investigated in order to inspect the latter effect for teenage girls; though teenage sexual behavior and risks are not limited to females, the consequences of sexual activity are categorically different for girls.
Within Add Health, data collected from the Wave I In-Home Parent Survey and the Wave I In-Home Adolescent Survey will be analyzed. For the parent data, a scale based on a factor analysis will be created using the data from several questions relating to parental comfort with talking about sexual behavior and sex-related risks. Using this scale, analyses will be run with data from the adolescent survey regarding the motivation that underlies teens motivation to engage in risky behavior, controlling for sex of the parent, education level of the parent, and age of the child to determine whether or not any mediating or moderating variables exist in this relationship.