Premarital Sexual Intercourse and Associated Factors Among
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Behulu et al. BMC Res Notes (2019) 12:95 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-019-4132-4 BMC Research Notes RESEARCH NOTE Open Access Premarital sexual intercourse and associated factors among adolescent students in Debre-Markos town secondary and preparatory schools, north west Ethiopia, 2017 Geremew Kindie Behulu, Kiber Temesgen Anteneh and Getie Lake Aynalem* Abstract Objective: To assess the magnitude and factors associated with premarital sexual intercourse among adolescent students of the secondary and preparatory school in Debre-Markos town, northwest Ethiopia, 2017. Results: Among secondary and preparatory school adolescent students, 31.3% reported pre-marital sexual inter- course. This shows that premarital sexual intercourse among secondary and preparatory school adolescents is high. Signifcantly associated factors were: being male (AOR 1.9, 95% CI 1.21, 2.93), having pocket money (AOR 3.1, 95% CI 2, 4.81), adolescents who did not discuss sexual issue= with close friends (AOR 8.6, 95% CI 5.27, 13.91) and= peer pressure (AOR 7.7, 95% CI 3.73, 15.69). = = Keywords: Premarital sexual practice, School adolescents, Ethiopia Introduction Te adolescent years are the time of rapid growth, Premarital sex is penetrative vaginal intercourse per- exploration, and risk-taking. In many countries, an aver- formed between couples before formal marriage [1, 2]. age of 29% of boys and 23% of girls are sexually active World Health Organization (WHO) defnes adoles- including premarital sex [7]. cent as persons between the age group of 10–19 years Many adolescents face pressures to use alcohol, ciga- old [3]. Adolescence is the period of transmission from rettes, or other drugs and to initiate sexual relationships childhood to maturity and is characterized by spurt of at earlier ages, to put themselves at high risk for inten- physical, mental, emotional, social and psychosexual tional and unintentional injuries and risky sexual behav- development [4]. iors [8]. Females, particularly adolescent girls may end up Adolescents are a growing and larger segment of the with unwanted pregnancies, abortions, teenage deliver- population of developing countries and an estimated 1.2 ies, and various complications of these including death. billion young people in the world, 85% live in developing Moreover, the girls may drop out from school to look countries [5]. Nearly 85% of the world’s adolescent popu- after their children, and in most cases, they become eco- lation live in developing countries and in some sub-Saha- nomically reliant on upon their parents [1]. ran countries, population below 15 years of age is fve Nearly 70% of premature deaths among adults can be times greater than the population over 55 years of age [6]. linked to behaviors that were initiated during adoles- cence [9]. Unwanted pregnancy can be associated with higher likelihood of early motherhood, unsafe abortion, *Correspondence: [email protected] and other pregnancy-related complications [10]. Department of Midwifery, College of Medicine and Health Science, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Behulu et al. BMC Res Notes (2019) 12:95 Page 2 of 6 Several studies in sub-Saharan Africa have also docu- Operational defnitions mented high and increasing premarital sexual activities Age at initial sexual contact is age at frst intercourse among adolescents [8]. According to EDHS 2016, 13 per- (vaginal–penile penetration). cent of women age 15–19 in Ethiopia have begun child- Early sexual initiation was taken as an experience of bearing [11]. In Amhara region, pre-marital sexual debut frst intercourse before 18 years of age. was reported as early as 12 to 13 years [10]. Sexually active A student who had a penetrative sexual Studies have documented that early sexual initiators intercourse (vaginal) at least once prior to the study. were more likely to report undesired consequences of Peer pressure when the individual said yes/no to ques- sexual initiation such as teenage motherhood, not using tion saying “did your friend initiate you to do sex?” [18]. a condom at frst sex and sexually transmitted infections Pocket money when the individual said yes/no to ques- (STIs). Adolescents are also likely to have an intimate tion saying “did you have pocket money?” [19]. partner who is fve or more years older and be involved in multiple sexual partnerships [12]. Even though some studies were conducted on this topic, most of them focused on only females [5, 10, 13], youth [14, 15] and university students [7, 8], there is a Table 1 Socio-demographic characteristics of adolescent gap of including males, married females and adolescents. students in Debre-Markos secondary and preparatory schools, from Nov. 23–27, 2017 (n 600) Terefore, this study tried to fll the above gaps. = Variables Frequency Percent (%) Main text Age Methods 15–17 278 46.3 Study design and setting 18 322 53.7 Gender An institutional based cross-sectional study design was Male 296 49.3 conducted among secondary and preparatory school ado- Female 304 50.7 lescent students in Debre-Markos town from November Current residence 23–27, 2017. Te town is located at about 295 km to the Rural 297 49.5 capital city of Ethiopia. Based on the 2007 national cen- Urban 303 50.5 sus conducted by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethio- Grades pia (CSA), this town has a total population of 62,497, of Grade 9 154 25.7 whom 29,921 were men. Te majority Ethiopian Ortho- Grade 10 148 24.7 dox Christianity followers, with 97.03% reporting [16]. Grade 11 146 24.3 Tere are three secondary and two preparatory schools Grade 12 152 25.3 in the town. Ethnicity Amhara 583 97.2 Sample size and sampling procedure Oromo 17 2.8 Religion A single population proportion formula was used to Orthodox 565 94.1 calculate the sample size of 624 by taking the follow- Muslim 16 2.7 ing assumptions. From the previous study conducted in Protestant 19 3.2 Jimma town on premarital sexual practice among school Attending church/mosque programs adolescents [17], 25.27%, 95% CI, 5% marginal error and Yes 581 96.8 n ((Zα/2)2 p (1 p))/W2. Adding a 15% non-response = − No 19 3.2 rate and design efect of 2, the total sample size required How often attend religious services was 624. Every day 139 23.9 Multi-stage stratifed sampling technique used to select Every week 228 39.2 adolescent students. All regular adolescent students (sec- Every month 139 23.9 ondary and preparatory) attending class at the time of Every year 31 5.3 the survey in Debre-Markos secondary and preparatory No response 44 7.6 school divided into diferent strata. Grade considered as strata. Te number of adolescent students from each Pocket money grade level and sections according to their sex identifed Yes 196 32.7 by using the name and sex list of each section. No 404 67.3 Behulu et al. BMC Res Notes (2019) 12:95 Page 3 of 6 Table 2 Parental characteristics of adolescent students Table 2 (continued) in Debre-Markos secondary and preparatory school Variables Frequency Percent (%) from Nov. 23–27, 2017 (n 600) = Parents marital status Variables Frequency Percent (%) Currently married 495 82.5 With whom usually live Separated 30 5.0 Father and mother 333 55.4 Divorced 16 2.7 Mother only 57 9.5 Widowed 42 7.0 Father only 18 3.0 Otherb 17 2.8 Relatives 43 7.2 a Priest Friends 22 3.7 b Whose mother died Alone 127 21.2 Parental residence Data collection instrument and process Rural 275 46.1 Urban 321 53.9 Data were collected using a semi-structured, pre-tested Mother alive and self-administered questionnaire adapted from the lit- Yes 583 97.2 eratures. Te data collection tool was prepared in Eng- No 17 2.8 lish and then translated into local language Amharic and Maternal educational status fnally returned to English by English language exper- Unable to read and write 113 19.4 tise. Four midwives were involved in the data collection Read and write 168 28.8 process. Primary (1–8) 94 16.1 Appropriate information and instructions were given Secondary (9–10) 38 6.5 on the objective, the relevance of the study, confdential- Above secondary 170 29.2 ity of information, respondent’s rights, informed consent, Maternal occupational status and technique of data collection and 1-day training was Housewife 216 37.0 given to data collectors and the supervisor on data collec- Daily laborer 17 2.9 tion. Before the actual data collection, pre-test was done Farmer 174 29.8 on 5% of students in Dejen secondary and preparatory Government employ 115 19.7 school which was out of the study setting but nearby. Te Merchant 25 4.3 collected data checked for completeness and clarity by Housemaid 36 6.2 principal investigator and supervisor. Privacy and conf- Father alive dentiality of the respondents were maintained through- Yes 552 92.0 out the data collection period. No 48 8.0 Data analysis Paternal educational status Unable to read and write 69 12.5 Data coded and entered into a computer using Epi info Read and write 168 30.4 version 7.2.0.1 and checked for completeness and trans- Primary (1–8) 69 12.5 ferred to SPSS version 20 for analysis.