PERSON AND ENVIRONMENT IN HIV RISK BEHAVIOR-CHANGE BETWEEN ADOLESCENCE AND YOUNG ADULTHOOD

This article explores how personal and environmental variables influen ce change in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-related risk behaviors between adolescence and young adulthood. Repeated interviews with 602 youths from 10 cities across the United States provide the data These interviews first occurred in 1984-1985 and 1985-1986 when the youths were adolescents and were repeated again in 1989-1990 and 1991-1992 wh en they were all young adults. A longitudinal multivariate analysis sh ows that 31% of the variance in HIV risk behaviors by inner-city young adults is predicted by a combination of adolescent risk behaviors, pe rsonal variables (suicidality, substance misuse, antisocial behavior), environmental variables (history of child abuse, poor relations with parents, stressful events, peer misbehavior, number of AIDS prevention messages), and interactions between variables (number of neighborhood murders with child abuse, number of neighborhood murders with substan ce misuse, and unemployment rates with antisocial behavior).