Inoculation's Efficacy With Young Adults' Risky Behaviors: Can Inoculation Confer Cross-Protection Over Related but Untreated Issues?

Abstract

This investigation examined the potential of inoculation to protect young adults' attitudes from pressures to engage in risky behaviors (unprotected sex and binge drinking) as well as inoculation's efficacy in conferring umbrella protection (cross-protection) over related, but experimentally untreated, attitudes. A three-phase experiment was conducted involving 120 participants. The results revealed that inoculation can protect the attitudes of young adults from counterattitudinal pressures to engage in unprotected sex (treated issue) and binge drinking (untreated issue). Practical applications of these findings are explored, including the use of inoculation when designing health messages and more thorough assessments of health campaigns designed to discourage risky behaviors.

Notes

¹Three separate exploratory factor analyses using principal component method conducted on the data set using varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization cleanly divided all condom-use and binge-drinking items on two separate factors for all three scaled variables of interest: initial attitudes, final attitudes, and attitudes toward the attack. Consequently, no adjustments to the scale items were necessary. Although conceptually different, as indicated in the extant literature, the two attitudes toward the issues are closely linked as evidenced by their bivariate correlations (r = .534 for initial attitudes and r = .528 for final attitudes).