This paper examines the connections of mental health, victimization, and sexual risk behaviors among a sample of 278 street-based female sex workers in Miami. Using targeted sampling strategies, drug-using sex workers were recruited into an HIV prevention research program. Data were collected by trained interviewers, and focused on drug use and sexual risk for HIV, childhood abuse, recent victimization, and mental health. More than half of the participants reported histories of

HIV prevention and risk reduction are especially salient and timely issues for women, particularly among those who are drug-involved or who exchange sex for drugs or money. Studies suggest that HIV-prevention measures can be effective with highly vulnerable women, and have the potential to produce significant reductions in risk behaviours among both HIV-negative and HIV-positive women. Within this context, this paper examines risk behaviours and HIV serostatus among 407 drug-involved women sex workers in Miami, Florida, and investigates the effects of participation in HIV testing, counselling, and a risk-reduction intervention on subsequent behavioural change among this population. Overall, at follow-up, the HIV-positive women were 2.4 times more likely than the HIV-negative women to have entered residential treatment for drug abuse, 2.2 times more likely to have decreased the number of their sex partners, 1.9 times more likely to have decreased the frequency of unprotected sex, 1.9 times more likely to have reduced their levels of alcohol use, and 2.3 times more likely to have decreased their crack use. These data support the importance of HIV testing and risk-reduction programmes for drug-involved women sex workers.

Previous research has demonstrated that one person's expectations can influence the behavior of another person, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. This study examined the effects of ability-based expectations in an experiment in which some participants ("coaches") were assigned false expectations of the basketball free-throw shooting ability of other participants ("players"). Coaches allocated more opportunities to players for whom the false expectation was positive, and fewer shots to players for whom the false expectation was negative. In turn, players who were allocated more shots made a higher percentage of them, thereby confirming their coaches' expectations about their shooting ability, and were more confident in their shooting ability following the task, than players who were allocated fewer shots.

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