They want participants to feel comfortable when discussing sexual matters. However, with just a one-time session, there is a high failure rate. Many adolescents may not yet be ready to learn. Or the presentation may come too late. While the former is a one-hour presentation on HIV prevention, the other models under study offer information over several months.
Parents are an integral component to the study.
When you teach the parents, then they can provide the information on an ongoing, as-needed basis to their children. The AIDS Knowledge and Skills groups receive social cognitive training. Facilitators lead discussions on HIV and AIDS, physical and emotional changes that occur during puberty, strategies for delaying sexual intercourse, communications skills, and assertiveness training. The program seeks to make parents and their children more comfortable in discussing issues of sexuality. But what research has shown is that younger adolescents don't talk to their friends about sex either.