Sexual and reproductive health of high school students in Changning District, Shanghai / 上海预防医学

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the current situation of sexual and reproductive health education in Changning District high schools, and to provide theoretical basis for formulating relevant contents and forms of sexual and reproductive health services for teenagers in future. Methods A total of 459 students from 5 high schools were investigated by questionnaire from September to December 2017.The questionnaire included basic information, sexual development and satisfaction with self-gender, attitudes, behaviors, knowledge, access and needs about sexual and reproductive health. Results The subjects consisted of 223 boys (48.6%), and 236 girls (51.4%), 100% of the girls had menstruation, 9% of the boys had no spermatorrhea experience.The girls were significantly higher in proportion than the boys in their sex dissatisfaction; boys were more inclined to support marginal and sexual behavior than girls; 63.4% of boys and girls opposed premarital sexual behavior and girls were more than boys in this regard; boys were more than girls in love experience and masturbation; 52.3% of the boys and girls could understand the knowledge of sexual and reproductive health and no gender difference was found. Their knowledge of contraception is poor, in which the difference between boys and girls was obvious.Girls were more concerned about the dangers of unintended pregnancy.The knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases was generally low.Network, school education, classmates and friends private chat were the top 3 approaches (accounting for 56.9%, 52.7%, 50.5%) for them to obtain the knowledge of sexual and reproductive health; their parents generally lacked sexual and reproductive health education; the proportions of rational demand of sexual psychology, sexual health, sexual physiology (contraception, fertility), prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, sexual ethics were 53.6%, 45.5%, 42.0%, 36.2%, 45.1%, respectively and there was no significant gender difference found in them. Conclusion The attitudes towards sex related behaviors among high school students are still at a relatively conservative stage.Their awareness of contraception, injury of unintended pregnancy, knowledge of sexual transmission and so on needs to be improved.It is imperative to pay attention to gender differences in providing sexual and health education and concept guidance and to help adolescents to establish a systematic and multi-channel health education system.