Chicago Adolescent Risk Evaluation Study
Index

CARES is designed to learn what teenagers and parents know about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent the spread of HIV among youth, especially youth in psychiatric treatment, who are at increased risk for exposure to HIV. The goals of the study are to: (1) determine the rates of risky sexual behavior and drug use among teens seeking mental health services and compare them to rates of risk behaviors among other adolescents; (2) compare two models of AIDS-risk, an Information-Motivation-Behavior model and a Social-Personal model; and (3) compare the model for different groups of youth (e.g., internalizing, externalizing, substance abusing). The long-term significance of this research is to guide the development of specially targeted AIDS prevention programs for youth in psychiatric treatment.

We recruit teenagers 12- to 19-years-old from the Institute for Juvenile Research (IJR) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and from Children's Memorial Hosptial. Teenagers and parents are asked about the adolescent's risk behavior (i.e., sexual behavior, drug use, needle use), the problems for which the adolescent is in treatment, what they know about HIV/AIDS, their attitudes about HIV/AIDS, and what their family is like. In addition, the parent and teenager participate together in a videotaped interaction task during which they are given fictional situations and an actual conflict in their relationship to discuss. Finally, both the parent and adolescent complete the CDISC, a computerized diagnostic assessment based on DSM-IV criteria, to report the adolescent's psychiatric symptoms.