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Abstract
The beneficial or deleterious effects of employment on youth and well-being have been highly contested. This study explores whether work influences youths' sexual risk correlates in a sample of African Americans (N = 562; 55% females; M = 14.5 years, SD = 0.6 years) followed longitudinally from adolescence to early adulthood. The study used growth curve modeling to test the association between number of hours worked and condom use, sex partners' age differences, and number of partners over time. Working a greater number of hours was associated with less condom use, with the effect varying by youths' grade point average. Working a greater number of hours was associated with older sex partners among female youth. No association was found between work and number of partners. The findings suggest that working during adolescence and early adulthood increased participants' sexual activity, thus lending some support for the work consequences perspective. The implications for future research and youth development programs are discussed.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a National Institute on Drug Abuse grant (R01-DA07484; principal investigator, Marc. A. Zimmerman). José A. Bauermeister is supported by a training grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (T32 MH19139 Behavioral Sciences Research in HIV Infection; principal investigator, Anke A. Ehrhardt, PhD). Special thanks to Kate Elkington, Shari Dworkin, and Heino Meyer-Bahlburg for providing feedback during the development of this manuscript.
Notes
Note. Wave 1 measures assess youths' lifetime history on the outcome; all other waves refer to occurrence in the previous year.
a Variable is reverse–coded; scale ranges from 1 (always use condom) to 5 (never use condom).
b Measure created by subtracting participants' age at the time of interview from the reported age of their last sexual partner in each wave (e.g., participants' age – partners' age. Partners' age was not collected at Wave 1.