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What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra

BACKGROUND: Adolescent sexual activity, especially among the urban poor, remains a challenge. Despite numerous interventions and programs to address the negative consequences arising from early and frequent sexual activity among youth in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, only slight progress has...

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Autores principales: Biney, Adriana A. E., Dodoo, F. Nii-Amoo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4700634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26728718
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2620-6
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author Biney, Adriana A. E.
Dodoo, F. Nii-Amoo
author_facet Biney, Adriana A. E.
Dodoo, F. Nii-Amoo
author_sort Biney, Adriana A. E.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Adolescent sexual activity, especially among the urban poor, remains a challenge. Despite numerous interventions and programs to address the negative consequences arising from early and frequent sexual activity among youth in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, only slight progress has been made. A plausible explanation is that our understanding of what adolescents think about sex and about their own sexuality is poor. In that sense, examining how adolescents in urban poor communities think about their sexual readiness, and identifying characteristics associated with that sexual self-concept dimension, should deepen our understanding of this topical issue. METHODS: A total of 196 male and female adolescents, ages 12 to 19, were surveyed in the 2011 RIPS Urban Health and Poverty Project in Accra, Ghana. The youth responded to three statements which determined their levels of sexual readiness. Other background characteristics were also obtained enabling the assessment of the correlates of their preparedness to engage in sex. The data were analyzed using ordered logistic regression models. RESULTS: Overall, the majority of respondents did not consider themselves ready for sex. Multivariate analyses indicated that sexual experience, exposure to pornographic movies, gender, ethnicity and household wealth were significantly linked to their readiness for sex. CONCLUSION: Sexual readiness is related to sexual activity as well as other characteristics of the adolescents, suggesting the need to consider these factors in the design of programs and interventions to curb early sex. The subject of sexual readiness has to be investigated further to ensure adolescents do not identify with any negative effects of this sexual self-view.
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spelling pubmed-47006342016-01-06 What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra Biney, Adriana A. E. Dodoo, F. Nii-Amoo BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Adolescent sexual activity, especially among the urban poor, remains a challenge. Despite numerous interventions and programs to address the negative consequences arising from early and frequent sexual activity among youth in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, only slight progress has been made. A plausible explanation is that our understanding of what adolescents think about sex and about their own sexuality is poor. In that sense, examining how adolescents in urban poor communities think about their sexual readiness, and identifying characteristics associated with that sexual self-concept dimension, should deepen our understanding of this topical issue. METHODS: A total of 196 male and female adolescents, ages 12 to 19, were surveyed in the 2011 RIPS Urban Health and Poverty Project in Accra, Ghana. The youth responded to three statements which determined their levels of sexual readiness. Other background characteristics were also obtained enabling the assessment of the correlates of their preparedness to engage in sex. The data were analyzed using ordered logistic regression models. RESULTS: Overall, the majority of respondents did not consider themselves ready for sex. Multivariate analyses indicated that sexual experience, exposure to pornographic movies, gender, ethnicity and household wealth were significantly linked to their readiness for sex. CONCLUSION: Sexual readiness is related to sexual activity as well as other characteristics of the adolescents, suggesting the need to consider these factors in the design of programs and interventions to curb early sex. The subject of sexual readiness has to be investigated further to ensure adolescents do not identify with any negative effects of this sexual self-view. BioMed Central 2016-01-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4700634/ /pubmed/26728718 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2620-6 Text en © Biney and Dodoo. 2015 Open AccessThis 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.
spellingShingle Research Article
Biney, Adriana A. E.
Dodoo, F. Nii-Amoo
What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra
title What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra
title_full What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra
title_fullStr What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra
title_full_unstemmed What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra
title_short What are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? Exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor Accra
title_sort what are the characteristics of ‘sexually ready’ adolescents? exploring the sexual readiness of youth in urban poor accra
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4700634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26728718
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2620-6
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