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Predicting safe sex: Assessment of autoregressive and cross-lagged effects within the Theory of Planned Behavior

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Journal of Health Psychology: An Interdisciplinary, International Journal

Published online on

Abstract

Despite its popularity, few studies have assessed the temporal stability and cross-lagged effects of the Theory of Planned Behavior factors: Attitude, subjective norms and self-efficacy. For this study, 298 adolescent learners from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, filled out a Theory of Planned Behavior questionnaire on teenage pregnancy at baseline and after 6 months. Structural equation modeling showed that there were considerable cross-lagged effects between attitude and subjective norms. Temporal stability was moderate with test–retest correlations ranging from 0.37 to 0.51 and the model was able to predict intentions to have safe sex (R2 = 0.69) Implications for practice and future research are discussed.