Sosa's idea (later abandoned) that knowledge is safe belief accords well with a virtue-theoretic approach to knowledge.
It keeps us in the safe belief that if, God forbid, we happened to face extraordinary historical circumstances we would behave like heroes.
After adjusting for sex, age, country, economic status, religiosity, school funding (public/private) and school type (coeducational/single-sex; model 3), the odds of having had sex is 82% higher among adolescents with a safe-sex belief than among those without a safe-sex belief (OR=1.82; 95% CI 1.51 to 2.21).
The only significant interaction was found between having a safe-sex belief and country, showing that the association between having a safe-sex belief and sexual initiation was higher among Filipinos than among Peruvians (data not shown, see figure 1).
The association between having a safe-sex belief and sexual initiation was assessed in more depth.
Having a safe-sex belief was associated with having had sex.
A third possible interpretation of the results is that other confounding variables might be influencing both having a safe-sex belief and sexual initiation.
In keeping with this theory, one of the possible interpretations of our data would suggest that a safe-sex belief might indeed increase sexual initiation among adolescents.
In the crude analysis, sexual initiation was more frequent among participants with a safe-sex belief, among males, older participants, Salvadorians, participants with high economic status, with low religiosity and from coeducational schools (table 3).
However, unlike from other Authors, who generally emphasize discrepancy between safe beliefs vs. unsafe practices, in the current study, comparatively better results were obtained for practices than knowledge and attitudes [ 19, 20].
