The paper analyzes socio-cultural and psychosocial factors affecting sexual activities
and related risk-taking behaviors in Croatian high-school students. It attempts to determine
the correlates of sexual activity, early sexual initiation, the number of sexual partners,
and the use of contraceptives and condoms. Due to the gender-specific trajectories
of sexual socialization and initiation, all the analyses were carried out separately for female
and male students. The results point out gender-specific structure of adolescent
sexual risk-taking, clustering of risk-taking activities, and the habitual character of sexual
risk-taking. These findings should be instrumental for the development of a comprehensive
school-based sex education curriculum that Croatia lacks
