Funding: NIAAA R01 AA08564
Our goal in the past five years has been to explore how drinking behaviors are associated with sexual risk behaviors. In that time period, six surveys (two on local samples and four on national samples) and several experimental studies were designed and carried out to test this association. We considered sexually transmitted disease outcomes in pursuing the association between drinking behaviors and sexual risk behaviors. The specific aims detailed below were addressed through: (1) the collection of data on drinking and sexual risk behavior in conjunction with the Alcohol Research Group’s (ARG) 1995 National Alcohol Survey; (2) an interview and medical record study of 1,050 patients in Alameda County’s Public Health STD clinics; and (3) continuing analysis of selected data in existing ARG data sets. Specific aims were: (a) to investigate which aspects of drinking are associated with higher incidence and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases; (b) to investigate which aspects of sexual risk behavior are associated with higher incidence and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases; (c) to build models of the association of drinking, sexual risk behavior and STD outcomes using cross-sectional and longitudinal data; (d) to investigate epidemiological variations in these models as a function of gender, age, ethnicity and other demographic factors; (e) to investigate theoretical explanations for the association of drinking, sexual risk behaviors, and STD outcomes, such as common causality by third” variable factors (problem behavior impulsivity situational factors); and finally (f) to bridge the gap between research and prevention by investigating the applicability of the Theory of Planned Behavior to understanding STD outcomes under problematic and non-problematic circumstances.
