Immigrant status, substance use and sexual risk among Afro-Caribbean adolescents living in South Florida

Objectives: To describe the co-occurrence of substance use and sexual activity behaviors among Afro-Caribbean adolescents living in South Florida, with attention to legal status, socio-demographic factors and risk-taking attitudes and behaviors. Methods: Convenience sampling was used to select 106 Afro-Caribbean adolescents from community centers in South Florida. A descriptive exploratory study was conducted. Data was analyzed using an independent t test, frequencies and crosstabs. Results: The study consists of 106 adolescents, 75% (n = 79) documented and 25% (n = 27) undocumented. Forty-one documented and 10 undocumented adolescents were sexually active. Of those, 14.6% of the documented and 40% of the undocumented adolescents had been drinking alcohol while engaging in sexual activity; 7.3% of documented and 30% of undocumented adolescents used drugs while engaging in sexual activity. Undocumented adolescents had less adult presence before and after school; Creole was spoken at home more than English, and none of the parents had gone to or graduated from college. There was no significant difference in risk-taking and social adaptation scores as measured by the Adolescent Risk-Taking Instrument (ARTI) for the documented and undocumented Afro-Caribbean adolescents. The ARTI had acceptable internal consistency reliability for the risk-taking (.87) and social adaption (.82) scale in this population. The mean score of risk behavior was 2.04 (SD = .44) for documented Afro-Caribbean adolescents and 1.89 (SD = .47) for undocumented adolescents. For social adaptation, mean scores were 3.23 (SD = .45) for documented and 3.20 (SD = .35) for undocumented adolescents. The co-occurrence of substance use and sexual activity is nearly triple for alcohol use and more than triple for drug use when comparing undocumented to documented adolescents.