Determinants of sexual health knowledge in adolescent girls in schools of Riyadh-Saudi Arabia: a cross sectional study

BMC Women's Health

Research Article

Maha Al Muneef¹  AlJohara M AlQuaiz²  Ambreen Kazi² 

[1] National Family Safety Program & Infectious Diseases, King Saud Bin Abdul Aziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;Princess Nora Bint Abdullah Women Health Research Chair, College of Medicine, King Saud University, PO Box 231831, 11321, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;

关键词: Sexual health knowledge;    Female;    Adolescents;    Parent’s role;    Friends;    School curriculum;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6874-13-19

 received in 2012-10-17, accepted in 2013-04-09,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThere are many social and cultural factors affecting the sexual knowledge of adolescents. This study measured the sexual health knowledge level of adolescents and identified its association with role of parents, friends and school environment in adolescent girls in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.MethodsFour hundred and nineteen Saudi female students belonging to intermediate and secondary grades were randomly selected from four public and private girl schools. 255 (69.8%) students were ≤15 years and 164 (39.2%) were >15 years. A self-administered structured questionnaire comprising of socio-demographic information, role of parents and teachers, availability of school curriculum on sexual health was used. Sexual health knowledge was assessed through questions on identification of physical changes during puberty for ≤15 years and separate questions on sexually transmitted infections for >15 years.Results54% of ≤15years and 70.7% of >15 years had poor sexual health knowledge. Multivariate analysis found determinants for poor sexual health education in ≤15years are: lower education level of both parents (OR 10.87; 95% CI 2.44–48.38), second birth order or more (OR 2.32; 95% CI 1.24–4.33) and absence of school curriculum on sexual health (OR 0.56; 95% CI 0.33–0.95). Determinants for >15 years of age are : mothers with low literacy (OR 3.08, 95% CI 1.42–6.71), as for sources of poor sexual knowledge : parents (OR 10.10; 95% CI 2.70–37.74), schools (OR 6.95; 95% CI 1.95–24.78) maids (OR 4.57; 95% CI 1.26–16.59) and media (OR 5.12; 95% CI 1.29–20.07) were statistically significant factors.ConclusionGovernment agencies with collaboration of all stake holders should develop policies and programs for implementing and evaluating integrated and comprehensive sexual educational programs for adolescents in Saudi Arabia.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© AlQuaiz et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.