Assertive Communication Skills Research Articles

Having “The Talk”: Individual, Family, and Partner Factors on Unprotected Sex among Female Adolescent Offenders

This study assessed the influence of individual age and substance use, family support and communication, and partner support and communication on the frequency of unprotected sex among incarcerated adolescent females. Subjects (n = 273) completed a survey on psychosocial correlates and risk behaviors for sexually transmitted infections (STI). Communication with male partners and sex while under the influence have a significant impact on condom use. Findings highlight the necessity of providing assertive communication skills training and increasing self-efficacy as STI/HIV prevention components for adolescent females thus empowering their decision-making processes.

Effective Teaching-Learning Process for Training Assertive Communication Skills

The purpose of this study was to investigate teaching-learning processes for training life skills. A life skills training program with a focus on assertive communication skills was conducted at elementary schools in Chiba prefecture and Tokyo on 278 fifth-grade students. The basic training for life skills development includes the following five stages; 1) Instruction: Learning the meaning of assertive communication skills (cognitive domain), 2) Modeling: Observing the model, 3) Practice: Participating in role-play, 4) Feedback: Receiving positive feedback and comments on their role-play from other students, 5) Reinforcement: Writing a statement declaring the intention to use assertive communication in everyday life. Cognitive domain (how to develop assertive communication skills) was used in the instruction stages, and self-efficacy formation (affective domain) was used in the modeling, practice, and feedback stages. Students were placed into one of four training programs: a cognitive and self-efficacy formation training program (80 students), a cognitive domain training program (55 students), a self-efficacy formation training program (56 students), and a program for basic development of life skills (87 students). An assertiveness scale, self-efficacy scale and self-esteem scale for children were used for evaluation before the class, right after the class, a week after the class and a month later. Formative assessment was used in class. The main results were as follows: 1) The group which adopted cognitive domain development attained skills more effectively immediately after the class. The group that adopted affective formation (self-efficacy formation) was able to attain the skills more effectively after one week, and also one month after the class. 2) It was effective to incorporate cognitive development and self-efficacy formation into the teaching-learning process when trying to develop assertive communication skills. It can be concluded from this study that, in addition to the five basic processes of life skill development, it is effective to incorporate a ‘how to develop’ assertive communication skills program as well as self-efficacy formation into the teaching-learning process for assertive communication training.

A study on pregnant adolescents residing in a government home: common characteristics and their views on the pregnancy.

Adolescent pregnancy has emerged to be a significant public health and social issue in Malaysia as its prevalence is increasing in our population. This study aimed to identify the common characteristics of pregnant adolescents residing in a government shelter home. Their reasons for pregnancy, sources of information on contraception, and views on abortion and future care of the baby were explored. A cross-sectional study was performed on 26 universally sampled pregnant adolescents in the centre. The adolescents responded to a set of self-administered questionnaire on their socio-demographic profiles, reasons of their pregnancy, contraception and future plans including abortion as well as care of the newborn. Almost all (92%) of the adolescents were unmarried. Majority of them were in late adolescence, age between 16 to 19 years (73.1%), from urban areas (73.1%) and of low income families (53.8%). There were 69.3% of the adolescents who were school dropouts. The reasons for pregnancy were consensual sexual activity (63.0%), coercion by boyfriend (18.5%), and rape (11.5%). The main sources of information on contraception were friends (50%), partners (50%) and the internet or mass media (42.3%). 54% had considered abortion earlier, but majority (92.0%) disagreed that abortion should be legalised in Malaysia. Most of the adolescents planned to parent their child with or without help from significant others and only 42.3% planned to relinquish their child for adoption. To curb teenage pregnancy-related problems, efforts on educating the adolescents about sexual reproductive health and assertive communication skills should be implemented, especially to the late adolescents, school dropouts and those from poor urban families. Parenthood support may be necessary to the pregnant adolescents who opted to care for their own child.

Interactive Theater

The incidence of verbally abusive families has dramatically increased in pediatric hospitals. A workshop incorporating interactive theater was designed to support staff in developing assertive communication skills to manage verbal abuse. Professional actors performed skits based on clinical scenarios. Participants entered the scenarios at any point to change the communication style and affect a positive outcome. Interactive theater enhances emotive learning that is essential to affect behavioral change. This is a useful strategy for educators to include in any training that is designed to change behavior.

Assertive Communication Skills

Assertive communication is the ability to speak and interact in a manner that considers and respects the rights and opinions of o thers while also standing up for your own rights, needs and personal boundaries. Assertive communicat ion skills create opportunities for open discussion with a variety of opinions, needs and ch oices to be respectfully heard and considered in order to achieve a win-win solution to certain prob lems. It can strengthen your relationships, reducing stress from conflict and providing you wit h social support when facing difficult times.

A tool to teach communication skills to pharmacy students.

To develop a tool to teach pharmacy students assertive communication skills to use when talking with physicians over the telephone. As an assignment for their Communication Skills and Counseling course, students were asked to write a script involving a patient care issue or problem covering 3 different communication styles that could be used when contacting a prescriber by telephone: passive, aggressive, and assertive. Students worked in groups to write and act out the scripts for the class. Eight scripts were developed by students and rated by peers and faculty members. The script that received the highest ratings was used in the development of a multimedia educational CD. The development of hypothetical scripts describing a drug therapy problem and illustrating the types of interactions between physicians and pharmacists while discussing the problem allowed pharmacy students to explore different communication techniques and improve their communication skills.

College Students’ Adjustment: The Role of Parent–College Student Expectation Discrepancies and Communication Reciprocity

Parents’ influence on college students’ adjustment is underestimated frequently. As college students often set goals based on their perceptions of their parents’ expectations, discrepancies between college students’ and their parents’ expectations may be related to their adjustment. The purpose of this study was to examine parent–college student expectation discrepancies and communication reciprocity as predictors of college students’ adjustment in a diverse sample of 69 male and 105 female freshmen and sophomores from a large southeastern university. A subsample of their mothers and fathers also participated in this study. Correlational results revealed that college students report experiencing lower levels of self-worth and adjustment when higher expectation discrepancies are present between themselves and their parents. Regression results also indicated that expectation discrepancies and college students’ perceptions of communication reciprocity are important predictors of college students’ self-worth and adjustment. Such findings suggested that teaching assertive communication skills to college students and their parents may serve as a means of promoting positive outcomes for college students.

Introduction to the Special Section on Families, Youth, and HIV: Family-Based Intervention Studies

Every year, a new generation at-risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) emerges, posing unique challenges for prevention and intervention. Young people are now at the center of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic; 25% of STIs reported annually occur among youth, and around half of the people who acquire HIV become infected before they turn 25. AIDS is currently the leading cause of death in 15- to 24-year olds (National Center for Health Statistics, 2005). Most young people acquire HIV through unprotected sexual activity, and, thus, reducing adolescent sexual risk taking has become a national and international public health priority. Substance use also confers increased risk of exposure to HIV by impairing sexual decision-making and leading to inaccurate condom use. Unfortunately, rates of adolescent sexual behavior and substance use remain high. National surveys indicate that 60.7% of males and 62.3% of females report having had sexual intercourse by 12th grade, whereas only 67% of males and 48.5% of females report using a condom during their last sexual encounter (Grunbaum et al., 2004). Similarly, by 12th grade, males and females report high rates of alcohol (82.6 and 83.3%, respectively) and marijuana (51.7 and 44.9%, respectively) use, and notably 17.6% of females and 33.5% of males report using alcohol or drugs before last sexual intercourse (CDC, 2004). Reducing adolescent risky sexual and drug use behavior requires innovative solutions that are tailored to youths’ unique risk mechanisms. This special section describes four cutting edge prevention programs designed to reduce exposure to HIV/STIs among youth. HIV and STI prevention programs for young people have changed over the course of the epidemic. At the beginning of the 1980s, the first generation of AIDS prevention programs designed for youth focused on increasing knowledge about HIV transmission and prevention. These efforts assumed that knowledge alone would produce necessary behavioral changes. Unfortunately, although these programs successfully increased accurate knowledge about the modes of transmission and strategies for prevention, they did not lead directly to behavior change (Coyle, Boruch, & Turner, 1991). The second generation of HIV prevention programs sought to address these limitations by going beyond increasing knowledge. In the 1990s, HIV prevention interventions for youth drew on social cognitive theories to address perceptions of risk, safer-sex intentions, assertive communication, and condom use skills, in addition to HIV/STI knowledge. These programs yielded promising results, showing targeted reductions in sexual risk taking and other proximal factors, such as exposure to risk situations. Like HIV knowledge-based interventions, however, these programs focused on individual behavior, and few have produced long-term behavioral changes.

Psychosocial determinants of sexual activity and condom use intention among youth in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Determinants of sexual activity and intentions for condom use were examined guided by the Attitude, Social influences, and Self-efficacy (ASE) model as a theoretical framework. A total of 561 in and out-of-school youth (15-24 years) in Addis Ababa completed a self-administered questionnaire. A third of them reported sexual intercourse in the past and half of the sexually active used condoms during recent intercourse. Being out-of-school, male, aged 20-24 years, alcohol use and khat (amphetamine-like substance) consumption predicted the likelihood of engagement in sexual activity. Of these variables, however, male sex was more associated with reported condom use during recent sexual intercourse. Self-efficacy, skills, and barriers predicted 23% of the variance in intentions to use condoms. Self-efficacy was also associated with past condom use. Psychosocial constructs predicted more variations in condom use intention for males than for females. In general, self-efficacy was found to be the strongest predictor of the constructs, whereas attitude and social influences were the weakest. The study implies that HIV/AIDS prevention programmes for young people in Ethiopia need to emphasize building assertive communication skills in sexual negotiations and condom use. Minimizing the gender gap in sexual relationships forms the cornerstone for such educational strategies.

"Who You Dissin', Dude?" At-Risk Students Learn Assertive Communication Skills

calculate the number of steps left to get inside-all along wondering whether or not his hidden hand is on a gun. I'm a forty-seven-year-old mother to three grown daughters. I think, What would one of them have done had it happened to them? Elise, thirty, would have torn him a new orifice (or two) while lambasting his gross impertinence and crudeness, unless he had looked like Brad Pitt, which terrifies me much more. Emmy, twenty, would have blanched and hyperventilated her way into the mall, seething at his rudeness and vulgarity-an old man like that behaving as if he were even in the running with a twenty year old! Jess, eighteen, would have turned beet red and stammered in the parking lot while she spelled her name for him, wanting desperately to get away but feeling trapped by her own awkwardness and discomfort.

Gender-related correlates and predictors of consistent condom use among young adult African-American women: a prospective analysis.

The present study examined the correlates of consistent condom use among African-American women and prospectively evaluated the stability of these significant variables to predict consistent condom use at 3-month follow-up. A sample of 128 African-American women, 18-29 years of age completed a baseline interview and 3 months later completed a similar follow-up interview (n = 100). Compared to women who were inconsistent condom users, women who were consistent condom users were more likely to: have high assertive communication skills (OR=13), desire not becoming pregnant (OR=8.6), have high sexual self-control over condom use (OR=7.6), perceive having control over their partners' use of condoms (OR=6.6), be younger (OR=5.8), and report having a partner that was not committed to the relationship (OR=3.3). Prospective analyses identified baseline level of condom use as the best predictor of condom use at 3-month follow-up. Women who were consistent condom users at baseline were 6.3 times as likely to be consistent condom users at 3-month follow-up. In conclusion, HIV prevention programmes for women need to be gender specific and need to be implemented before high-risk behaviours are established and may be more difficult to modify.

Sexual behavior, communication, and chlamydial infections among college women.

The sexual practices, partner communication patterns, and prevalence of chlamydial infection were determined in a sample of college women. Specific inclusion criteria were used to screen 146 participants. The presence of a mucopurulent cervical discharge was the only criterion significantly associated with infection. Only 12% of the sample used condoms alone or in combination with another birth control method, and only 31% of the women discussed with their partner their own or their partner's sexual history. Thirty-eight percent of the sample reported a history of one to four episodes of a sexually transmitted disease, and 21% of the women stated they had had two or more sexual partners within the past 6 months. Health providers, counselors, and women themselves must address this health issue with more assertive behavior and communication skills.

Teaching assertive communication skills to adolescents with diabetes: evaluation of a camp curriculum.

Diabetes management requires consistently implementing adherence behaviors in a variety of settings. For some adolescents, consistency may be difficult due to problems in communication and assertiveness. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the impact of a camp curriculum to teach assertive communication skills to adolescents with diabetes. The curriculum included didactic information, sharing of personal experiences, and role playing. Results showed a significant increase in adolescents' perceptions of their assertiveness from before to after the camp experience, an increase that was still apparent at a 3-month follow-up. No changes were reported in parental perceptions of their adolescents' degree of openness in communicating or in communication problems. In contrast, adolescents reported a significant decrease in their degree of openness in communicating with fathers, with a similar trend for mothers. These results suggest that the curriculum was successful in meeting the primary goal of enhancing the adolescents' assertive communication skills but had a questionable impact on their general communications with parents.

Approaches to Increasing Assertive Behavior and Communication Skills in Blind and Visually Impaired Persons

Many visually impaired individuals are found to be too passive or too aggressive in their social interactions. Lack of assertive behavior is related to the concept of learned helplessness. Components of assertive behavior are described with suggestions for enabling the visually impaired person to develop these skills. The underlying concepts of assertion training are explained along with specific techniques to be utilized in the school or rehabilitative setting. With a structured intervention resulting in improved assertiveness skills, blind or partially sighted individuals can increase their effectiveness in communicating with others and can feel more in control of their lives.

Children of Separation and Divorce: Effects of a Social Role-Taking Group Intervention on Fourth and Fifth Graders

Fifty-seven 9-11-year-old children who had experienced parental separation or divorce participated in one of two divorce intervention groups. The experimental group provided training in cognitive social role taking and assertive communication skills. The placebo control group provided no specific skills training; its focus was the identification and discussion of feelings about the divorce. The children in the cognitive social role-taking group showed significantly more positive change in their beliefs and attitudes about the divorce (as measured by the Children's Attitude Toward Parental Separation Inventory) than did the children in the placebo group. No significant changes in depression (as measured by the Child Depression Scale) or school behavior (as measured by the Devereux Elementary School Behavior Rating Scale) were found. Results suggest that a period of consolidation may be necessary for changed attitudes and beliefs to produce measurable behavioral and emotional change.