College students' willingness to be honest and initiate discussions with healthcare providers about their past sexual behaviors

This dissertation discusses and evaluates various cognitive measures to predict college students' intentions to either initiate a discussion about sex or lie about past sexual behaviors to a primary healthcare provider. The following chapters explore stigma, concerns of providers' judgments, and shame, as well as variables of the Protection Motivation Theory. Results suggest that self-efficacy to initiate a discussion or lie to a provider about sex is the strongest independent predictor of college students' behavioral intentions. The dissertation concludes with the limitations to the study and an overview of the future research aimed at improving application of the Protection Motivation Theory to provider-patient communication about sex.