of early sexual debut, which is then associated with a greater number of sexual partners, lower rates of contraception use, and increased rates of unwanted pregnancy and STIs by mid-adolescence (e.g., Kaestle et al. 2005; Niccolai et al. 2004). A pathway to more typical onset of adolescent sexual behavior may comprise biological characteristics (e.g., earlier maturation), some minor problem behaviors (e.g., experimentation with alcohol) and cultural norms about the acceptability of teenage pregnancy. In addition to heterogeneity in pathways to sexual risk-taking, there is likely to be heterogeneity among the girls scoring high on sexual risk-taking. For example, some girls may have planned to become pregnant because they perceived support from extended family and the community (Azibo 1996), others may have prioritized intimacy in relationships over safe sexual practices (Kerrigan et al. 2007). In these cases, there may have been little covariation between condom use and other high risk behaviors. Research that aims to parse this heterogeneity by examining the moderating effects of contextual and normative factors as well as the developmental clustering of risk and protective factors for different sexual risk behaviors (e.g., inconsistent contraception use, multiple partners) is clearly needed.
