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Using the Health Belief Model to Explain Parents' Participation in Adolescents' At‐Home Sexuality Education Activities
Author(s) -
Brock Gay C.,
Beazley Richard P.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of school health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.851
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1746-1561
pISSN - 0022-4391
DOI - 10.1111/j.1746-1561.1995.tb06213.x
Subject(s) - human sexuality , medicine , population , psychology , developmental psychology , sexuality education , reproductive health , health education , clinical psychology , public health , nursing , gender studies , environmental health , sociology
The Health Belief Model (HBM) was used to study parents' involvement in six at‐home sexuality education activities for ninth grade students. These activities are part of Skills for Healthy Relationships: A Program About Sexuality, AIDS, and Other STD (SHR). Some 216 parents, 62% of the population, completed and returned a self‐administered questionnaire. Perceived barriers correlated most strongly with lack of parents' involvement in SHR. Additionally, perceived barriers and perceived self‐efficacy were the most significant factors differentiating parents involved in SHR at‐home activities from those who were uninvolved. Compared with highly involved parents, noninvolved parents were: 1) less confident their children wanted to do the activities with them (F[4,204] = 19.58, p < .0005), 2) less sure of their children's desire to talk with them about sex‐related issues (F[4,213] = 7.03. p < .0005), and 3) less certain their AIDS‐related facts were current (F[4,213] = 2.39, p = .05). Parents highly involved in SHR reported becoming more comfortable talking with their adolescents about STDs (F[4,205] = 4.04, p = .004) and felt their children talked a little more openly with them about AIDS and STDs (F[4,205] = 2.54, p = .04). In contrast, uninvolved parents reported no changes relative to communicating with their children about sexuality. For these reasons, SHR's inclusion of at‐home activities shows promise for increasing parent‐adolescent communication about sexuality. (J Sch Health. 1995;65(4):124–128)