Prevalence of Adolescents’ Heterosexual behaviours among Senior Secondary Schools in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the prevalence of adolescents’ heterosexual behaviours among senior secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive cross-sectional research design. From the total population of 185,225 students, a sample size of 1,200 was utilized. The face and content validity were ascertained. Reliability was determined using split half method and a reliability coefficient of 0.77 was gotten. Descriptive statistics of frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the null the null hypothesis were tested using chi-square statistics. The result of this study illustrated that the prevalence of heterosexual behaviours was 57.0% of which good proportion of them kissed opposite sex (63.3%), practiced sexual intercourse (62.1%), engaged in oral sex (76.0%) and anal sex with opposite sex (67.7%), engaged in masturbation (51.9%). Also, the result revealed that there was a significant relationship between age and prevalence of adolescents’ heterosexual behaviours (X2=14.200, df= 7, p<.05). Thus, the study recommended among other things that public health officials and Policy makers should initiate policy frameworks to regulate certain websites and the type of information that is made accessible to children and adolescents through the media networks; Parents should prioritize the health and social status of their children monitoring them and caution them against negative behaviours and pattern that may affect their reproductive well-being.

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