Healthy Adolescent Sexual Development Study, Florida, 2018-2019

Youths' high-risk sexual behaviors may be significantly reduced through healthy engagement in parental monitoring and supervision, parent-child connectedness, and parent-child sex conversations. This study was originally designed to explore fathers' role in these parenting behaviors, how they compare to that of mothers' and the relationship with any adolescent sexual behaviors. However, given issues with recruiting families for the mixed-methods approach, the study aim was changed. This study was guided by the parent-based expansion of the theory of planned behavior (PETPB). PETPB was developed using Bronfenbrenner's model on adolescent development and acknowledges that adolescents are significantly influenced by the family system, particularly by parenting behaviors such as connectedness, parent-child sex conversations, and monitoring and supervision (Hutchinson et al., 2012; Hutchinson & Wood, 2007). The PETPB asserts that family interventions and programs that improve these parenting behaviors may indirectly influence adolescents' sexual risk beliefs and behaviors, thus reducing their risk for pregnancy, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Therefore, the renewed aim was to explore the experiences of parents and teens in the southern US as it relates to parent-teen connectedness, parental monitoring, and parent-teen sex communication as well as the acceptability of an intervention to improve parenting and teen dynamics to indirectly reduce teens' sexual behaviors. Researchers conducted separate focus groups and in-depth interviews with 23 parents-teen dyads and triads to gather information on experiences, benefits, and challenges around parental monitoring of teens, parent-teen connectedness, and parent-teen sex communication.