ABSTRACT
A working instrument was designed to explore sex knowledge, practices and behaviours as well as factors related to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. The instrument consists of a questionnaire that should be asked by the interviewer. This questionnaire was validated in a test carried out in the City of Havana and submitted to the expert's criteria to improve its overall design.
Subject(s)
Adolescent , Female , Humans , Male , Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome , Adolescent Behavior , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , HIV Infections , Surveys and Questionnaires , Sexually Transmitted Diseases , Cuba , Socioeconomic FactorsABSTRACT
The observed increase of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) in Cuba aroused the interest of carrying out a study aimed at exploring risky sexual behaviours and attitudes, and histories of STD. A crosswise descriptive study was undertaken using a randomized sample taken from the universe of adolescent students in the City of Havana during 1995-96 school year. The sample was made up by 2,793 teenagers aged 11-19 years (1,370 females and 1,423 males). Previously trained experts linked to this field collected data by means of a structured interview which had been drawn up for this end. It was confirmed that more than half of adolescent students did not use condom in their sexual intercourse 57 had more than one sexual partner along the year, 40 believed it was difficult to keep only one partner whereas 35 had more than one sexual partner at the same time. Risk and protected sexual habits were noticed, with 39 for oral-genital and 21.4 for genital-anal. 22 for the interviewed adolescent said they had histories of STD.