Perceived social approval and condom use with casual partners among youth in urban Cameroon

Background: HIV prevention programs targeting youth often emphasize the role of peers, and assume that youths will model their behavior after their peers'. We challenge this view; we argue that adopting a given behavior requires social approval, and that youths do not necessarily turn to peers for such approval. This study analyzes survey data on youths in urban Cameroon to 1) identify which type of persons youths look to for social approval, and 2) establish how important social approval by these persons is for condom use among youths. Methods: We analyzed data from three survey waves (2000, 2002, and 2003) of a reproductive health survey conducted among urban Cameroonian youth (aged 15-24). Only respondents who reported having at least one casual partner in the past year were retained for the analysis. Bivariate analyses and structural equation modeling were used to examine relationships among perceived social approval, attitudes towards condoms and condom use. Results: The data show that only 3% of youths named their friends as people whose opinion they valued, while 93% mentioned family members. The perceived approval of condom use by these persons had a significant positive effect on the frequency of condom use among youths. The frequency of condom use was also affected by the respondents' attitudes toward condom use, the range of persons with whom they discussed reproductive health matters, whether they were enrolled in school, socioeconomic status, their self-efficacy, perceived severity of AIDS, risk perception and sexual risk behavior. The perceived social approval of condom use and the respondents' own condom attitudes were correlated. Conclusions: Our analysis demonstrates that perceived social approval facilitates the adoption of condom use among urban Cameroonian youth. However, youths tend to value the opinions of family members much more than the opinions of their peers. These results suggest that interventions targeting youths should not focus exclusively on peers but should also include other groups, such as parents and community leaders

Sexual activity and school deviant behaviour among adolescents: peer influence and homophily interactions with sex and ethnicity

Criminologist and sociologists have since long recognized the importance of peer influence in adolescence, but only rarely are peer influence interactions studied with regard to important salient status characteristics. This study examines whether homophily status characteristics condition the influence between best friends and the individual´s behaviour. The focus of the study is on school deviant behaviour as well as sexual activity. More specifically, we address the question to what extent peer influence differs for friends of the same sex or ethnicity (i.e. homophilic relationships), compared to friends who differ on sex and ethnicity (i.e. heterophilic relationships). Data from the Flemish Educational Assessment Study are used, which collected complete network data, from a representative sample of Flemish adolescents in secondary schools (N=11,837), clustered in 160 networks. Results indicate that peers best friend relationships are indeed strongly homophilic on both of these status dimensions and that homophilic friendships are significantly more influential than heterophilic ones. Further results show that native Belgian adolescents (majority teens) are significantly more influenced by homophilic relationships than adolescents belonging to a ethno-cultural minority group (minority teens). For sexual activity, girls are influenced stronger by homophilic relationships than boys, while for school deviant behavior the opposite is true. Cross-ethnic influence of majority teens on minority teens is substantially smaller than for minority teens on majority teens, especially for sexual activity. Implications of these findings for theory development and prevention programs are discussed

The rising powers and globalization : structural change to the global system between 1965 and 2005

This article critically assesses the increasingly prevalent claims of rapidly changing global power relations under influence of the ‘rising powers’ and ‘globalization.’ Our main contention is that current analyses of countries’ degree of global power (especially for the BRICS) has been dominated by the control over resources approach that, although it gauges power potential, it insufficiently accounts for how this potential is converted into actual global might. By drawing on a unique and extensive dataset comprised of a wide array of political, economic, and military networks for a vast number of countries between 1965 and 2005, we aim to 1) reassess alleged changes in the structure of the world-system since 1965 and 2) analyze whether or not these changes can be attributed to globalization. We pay attention to the trajectories of the BRICS and to the possibly divergent structural evolutions of the political and economic dimensions that constitute the system. Our results show that despite a certain degree of power convergence between countries at the sub-top of the system, divergence continues to take place between the most and least powerful, and stratification is reproduced. Globalization is further shown to exacerbate this trend, though its effect differs on the political and economic dimensions of the system. Though the traditional ‘core powers’ might have to share their power with newcomer China in the future, this hardly heralds a new age in which the global system of power relations are converging to the extent that stratification is being undermined