Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan, 2663 SPH Tower, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
British Columbia Cancer Research Center, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Arch Sex Behav. 2024 Oct;53(9):3537-3555. doi: 10.1007/s10508-024-02960-z. Epub 2024 Aug 27.
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) remain an important public health concern for people of all age groups, with older age groups experiencing a notable increase in STI burden. Historically, most research into STI risk behaviors has focused on adolescents and young adults, leaving a paucity of research on the ways STI risk factors change over the life course. Additionally, age and cohort trends in STI risk factors can be challenging to investigate with standard statistical tools as they can be collinear and are subject to sociocultural and generational influences. To help address these issues, we used multi-group latent class analysis to identify and compare risk behavior profiles defined by responses to three sexual activity and three substance use variables, across and within four age groups. We identified six behavior profiles in the unstratified dataset and five behavior profiles in each of the four age stratified groups. The five behavior profiles identified in each of the age categories appear to reflect a similar set of five underlying profile "archetypes," with the exact composition of each age category's five profiles varying in the magnitude that specific behaviors are endorsed. Interestingly, despite the similarity of profiles across the four age groups, analyses indicate that the experience of belonging to any one of these five archetypes differs by age group. This variance is likely due group specific age, period, and cohort effects, and may indicate that, when estimating one's STI risk, it is better to compare them to their peers than to the population as a whole.
性传播感染（STIs）仍然是所有年龄段人群的一个重要公共卫生关注点，老年人群体的 STI 负担明显增加。历史上，大多数关于 STI 风险行为的研究都集中在青少年和年轻人身上，而对 STI 风险因素在整个生命周期中如何变化的研究甚少。此外，由于年龄和队列趋势在 STI 风险因素中可能存在共线性，并且受到社会文化和代际影响，使用标准统计工具进行研究具有挑战性。为了解决这些问题，我们使用多组潜在类别分析来识别和比较跨越和在四个年龄组内，通过三个性行为和三个物质使用变量的回答来定义的风险行为特征。我们在未分层数据集中确定了六个行为特征，在每个四个年龄分层组中确定了五个行为特征。在每个年龄类别中确定的五个行为特征似乎反映了一组类似的五个潜在特征"原型"，每个年龄类别的五个特征的组成在特定行为被认可的程度上有所不同。有趣的是，尽管四个年龄组之间的特征相似，但分析表明，属于这五个原型中的任何一个的经历因年龄组而异。这种差异可能是由于特定年龄、时期和队列的特定效应引起的，这可能表明，在估计一个人的 STI 风险时，最好将他们与其同龄人进行比较，而不是与整个人口进行比较。
