Abstract
BackgroundThe ways church youth make sexual decisions are incompletely understood and yet important for public health interventions. This study aimed to examine personal religiosity influences on the sexual decisions by church youth from the country of Botswana, taking into account their sense of personal agency.MethodParticipants were 235 Botswana Pentecostal faith church youth (females = 67.2%, male = 32.8%; age range 12–23 years). They completed measures of personal religiosity, personal agency, sexual abstinence, and contraception use predisposition. We analysed the data applying Structural Equation Modelling to test five paths - personal religiosity to personal agency, personal agency to abstinence, personal religiosity to abstinence, personal agency to contraceptive use, and personal religiosity to contraceptive use.ResultsResults suggest that personal religiosity influences the youth in their sexual abstinence and contraception decisions through personal agency. High personal agency, but not personal religiosity, was associated with pro-sexual abstinence, and contraception use was associated with religiosity. Personal agency augmented the likelihood of both abstinence and contraception use decisions among the older church youth and with church youth with higher levels of formal education.ConclusionChurch youth likely adopt discretionary sexual behaviours over the developmental period from early to older adolescents, which would make them more receptive to public sexual health messages. Personal agency appears to be an important resource for public health interventions aimed at influencing church youth’s sexual decisions.
Highlights
The ways church youth make sexual decisions are incompletely understood and yet important for public health interventions
Personal agency appears to be an important resource for public health interventions aimed at influencing church youth’s sexual decisions
The sex of church youth was not significantly associated with any of their sexual decisions pertaining to abstinence, contraction, personal religiosity, or personal agency, thereby indicating a need to analyze for the total sample without splitting by sex
Summary
The ways church youth make sexual decisions are incompletely understood and yet important for public health interventions. Active church youth may carry a disproportionate risk for STIs from unprotected sexual encounters as emerging adults [16,17,18,19,20,21,22], perhaps due to lower exposure to public health education on contraception use [23]. Youth with first-sex (or sexual debut) can elect secondary abstinence with or without a romantic partner, reducing their risk for unwanted pregnancy and STIs [24]. They may perceive that they have personal agency or the ability to control their social outcomes and their health outcomes [10]
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