Appropriate sex education for black teens

This article is based on a year-long study of 207 low-income black youths. The major purpose of the research was twofold: (1) to study black teens' perceptions of family relationships in an effort to identify family member(s) who had the most potential for encouraging greater contraceptive responsibility and influencing teens' decisions about being or becoming sexually active, and (2) to study dating and sexual behavior, attitudes toward contraception, and sources of information, in an effort to identify more specific sex education needs of black teens and provide a basis for delineating pertinent characteristics of an effective sex education curriculum.