Parent-teen worry about the teen contracting AIDS

A secondary data analysis of the National Commission on Children: 1990 Surv ey of Parents and Children was conducted with a subsample of 457 parent-tee n pairs who responded to the "worry about AIDS" question. The teen's worry about contracting AIDS was associated with race, parent's education, the am ount of discipline from the parent for engaging in sex, the teen's desire t o talk to the parent about the problem of sex, the teen's rating of the nei ghborhood as a safe place to grow up, whether the parent listened to the te en's telephone interview and the parent's response to whether his or her te en had a history of sexually transmitted disease. Of the parent-teen pairs in the subsample, 46% (N = 210) agreed in their responses about worry. Agre ement was more frequent among the parent-teen pairs when compared to random ly constructed surrogate pairs. Dyadic analysis supported a family system v iew of perceived susceptibility.