Sexual Behaviour and Domestic Violence among Teenage Girls in Yakurr Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigates the relationship between sexual behavior and domestic violence among teenage girls in Yakurr Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria. The study used one research objective and hypothesis to guide the study. Literature was reviewed in accordance with the research variables. Population of the study was basically teenage girls, between ages 13-17 years from the study area. The research instrument used to elicit information from respondents was the questionnaire. The study adopted a survey research design while a sample of 215 respondents was randomly sampled from thirteen council wards that constitute Yakurr. Stratified and simple random sampling technique were adopted. The Pearson product moment correlation analysis was used to test research hypothesis. The results revealed that there is high rate of sexual immorality including premarital sex, illicit sex, rape and homosexuality among teenage girls, leading to high rate of teenage pregnancy, rampant school drop-out and restiveness. Based on these findings, it was recommended that social work intervention measures such as counseling, awareness creation, sensitization, behavioral change process and vigorous campaigns should be organized for teenage girls in the area, so that they would be aware of the dangers of immoral sexual behavior and to avoid the consequences that attend it. Besides, sex education should be vigorously embarked upon to effect behavior modification among the teen girls.