Contraceptive behavior among youth in the United States: The importance of relationship characteristics

Personal involvement in romantic and sexual relationships increases during adolescence and young adulthood as does their significance. Relationship patterns and behaviors experienced during this period are influential for reproductive health outcomes and set the stage for future family formation choices and behaviors. This study utilized the retrospective sexual relationship histories of young adults available in the most recent wave (2001-2002) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to provide a more comprehensive characterization of nonmarital sexual relationships and to obtain a better understanding of the factors that are associated with contraceptive behavior, with a focus on the relationship context. Two analytic samples were derived. The first included individuals who identified any nonmarital heterosexual relationship that involved sexual intercourse (N=9,203 individuals and 26,948 relationships). The second included individuals who identified more than one such relationship (N=5,832 individuals and 22,740 relationships). Univariate and bivariate analyses were utilized to provide a detailed description of these relationships and to examine variation in their characteristics across key individual-level characteristics. Data reduction techniques were employed to empirically determine how to best characterize relationships into meaningful and distinct groups according to the unique patterns of their characteristics, the results of which informed the development of a detailed relationship typology. Multilevel multinomial random intercept models were estimated to investigate the associations between individual- and relationship-level characteristics and relationship-specific type of contraceptive method used at last sexual intercourse.;Results reveal that the nonmarital sexual relationships that are formed during this time period are diverse. The patterns of the relationship characteristics are substantively meaningful and can be characterized as one relationship typology reflecting varying levels of commitment. Contraceptive method use varies across relationships for a given individual as a function of commitment and heterogamy, net of individual characteristics. In other words, individuals behave differently in different relationships. The results also confirm the importance of individual characteristics, particularly gender, race/ethnicity, and age, and indicate that early background factors and experiences have enduring effects. Furthermore, the patterns of associations between individual and relationship characteristics and contraceptive use differ depending on the type of method and differ for women and men.