The LCA analyses revealed that profiles of adolescent risk varied for boys and girls, and required separate models. Although similarities emerged across gender in the number and characteristics of several classes, differences also emerged, reflecting the importance of considering gender in modeling developmental processes of risk. In addition, prior studies have documented earlier ages of initiation of sexual activity among African American youth compared with European-American youth (Doljanac and Zimmerman 1998). In the present study, a large majority of the African American youth in the sample were assigned to risk class 1 or 2, which conveyed the highest risk for pregnancy and STD (72 % of the African American boys; 57 % of the African American girls). The dramatic differences in sexual risk associated with ethnicity/race that are evident here suggest that more focused efforts are needed to understand the factors that contribute to early and risky sexual activity among urban African American youth. As an important limitation, it should be noted that in this sample, the urban African American youth experienced a higher level of adversity than the urban
