Ecological determinants of multiple sexual partnerships among adolescents in urban Cape Town: a cumulative risk factor approach

Evans Muchiri, University of the Witwatersrand
Clifford O. Odimegwu, University of the Witwatersrand
Sunday A. Adedini, Obafemi Awolowo University and University of the Witwatersrand

Adolescents in South Africa are at an increased risk of HIV infection because of the context they develop in; the country has the highest HIV burden in the world, and the practice of multiple sexual partnerships is highly prevalent. This article presents findings from the Cape Area Panel Study using the innovative cumulative risk factor analysis approach. Risk factors are organized using an ecological framework into individual, household, and community levels. Using multivariate discriminant function analysis, significant risk factors are integrated to generate risk indices that investigated whether increasing risk factors correlates with increasing MSP. Results from multivariate analysis indicate that risk factors emanate from different levels of the ecology and their effect tend to be cumulative; as more risk factors become present, increasing proportion of adolescents report MSP. Interventions aimed at reducing MSP among adolescents should not only focus on individual level factors but also the household and community.