THE LAST SEXUAL ENCOUNTER - THE CONTEXTUALIZATION OF SEXUAL RISK BEHAVIOR

We aim to apply critical incident methodology to details of respondent s' last sexual encounter to provide contextualized data on sexual beha viour and alleviate the problem of recall bias. In areas of Houston, T exas, registering high prevalence rates of syphilis, we elicited infor mation from 400 men and women about the last time they had sex. Detail s of time, place, partner, activities, and situational circumstances w ere collected in street intercept interviews. Nearly 50% of men and 30 % of women were drunk or high the last time they had sex, and more tha n one-quarter of last encounters occurred in hotel or motel rooms. Dru g use was not related to condom use. Both men and women were more like ly to use condoms with new than with more familiar sex partners; howev er, women were less likely than men to report condom use across all ty pes of sexual activity, and particularly for anal sex. The findings ar e being used to design a syphilis prevention intervention in the study communities.