Parental Verbal Communication and Sexual Knowledge of Senior Secondary School Students in South East, Nigeria

Main Article Content

CJ Orji
SU Arinze-Onyia
CN. Obionu

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Parental verbal communication may influence the sexual knowledge of senior secondary school students in Enugu State, Nigeria.
METHODS: This study utilized a school based cross-sectional study design and was conducted across the six education zones of Enugu State using three-stage sampling technique. A total of 400 respondents completed the interviewer administered questionnaires on their socio-demographics, sexual knowledge and parents’ information on verbal communication skills. Obtainable knowledge scores for sexuality ranged between 0-10; scores of 1-5 were classified as poor and 6-10 as good. Data analysis for the quantitative data was done using IBM SPSS; version 22. Chi square test of statistical significance and multivariate analysis using binary logistic regression were used in the analysis, and the level of significance was set at a p value of less than 0.05.
RESULTS: Out of the 400 respondents, 55.5% were girls. The mean age (SD) of the respondents was 15.9 ± 1.3 years. Although 15.5% and 8.8% of the respondents were very comfortable discussing sexually related matters with their mothers and fathers only 34.8% and 16.0% of mothers and fathers were comfortable discussing such matters with the respondents. Less than half of the respondents (42.5%) had good sexual knowledge. Verbal sexual communication between parents and respondents and age above 16 years were found to be predictors of good sexual knowledge.
CONCLUSIONS: Poor parental verbal communication led to the poor knowledge of sexuality among the respondents. Parents should be encouraged to discuss sexuality matters with their children.

Article Details

Section
Original Article
Author Biographies

CJ Orji, ESUCOM Healthcare Research Initiative

ESUCOM Healthcare Research Initiative

Enugu State University College of Medicine Enugu

SU Arinze-Onyia, ESUCOM Healthcare Research Initiative

ESUCOM Healthcare Research Initiative

Enugu State University College of Medicine Enugu

 

CN. Obionu, Enugu State University College of Medicine Enugu

Enugu State University College of Medicine Enugu