Adolescent sex education: Prevalence, sources and perspective among senior secondary school students in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State
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Abstract
Background: Adequate sex education is an essential tool for all adolescents. The purpose of this study was to determine the proportion of adolescents who have had access to sexuality education, their source and their perspective to sexuality education in Obio/Akpor local government area (LGA) of Rivers State.
Methods: This is a cross sectional descriptive school based study. A multistage sampling method was used to select four secondary schools (two public and two private) in Obio/Akpor LGA of Rivers State. The study participants were recruited by simple balloting from the senior secondary classes. The study instrument was a pretested semi-structured self-administered questionnaire. Data were analysed with Epi Info version 7.2.2.16 statistical programme. In all cases, a value of P < 0.05 was statistically significant.
Results: One thousand one hundred and ten participants were recruited for the study, ages ranged from 13 to 19 years with a mean age of 15.5 ± 1.6 years. Majority (91.9%) of the participants have been taught sex education. More males and students from public schools had not been taught sex education. Sources of sex education were school (58.3%) and parents (13.5%). Most (74.0%) of the students preferred a school-based sex education taught by their teachers and 96.5% supports sex education to be incorporated into the school curriculum. Furthermore, majority of the students acknowledged that sex education will help them prevent sexually transmitted infection and HIV/AIDS, pregnancy and help them relate better with the opposite sex.
Conclusion: It is concluded that every child irrespective of the gender, school type be given access to adequate sex education. Parents and teachers are encouraged to ensure that the appropriate age-specific information is given to the children to prevent them from accessing wrong information from unreliable sources. There is need to incorporate sex education into the secondary school curriculum.
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