Understanding Adolescents’ Sexual Behaviour in Ghana: Information Sources and Their Effects

Abstract

In Ghana, research reports indicate that parent–child communication on sex education is generally lacking even though sexual matters are among the popular topics for conversation, gossip, popular music, dance and jokes. Attempts are made by a few schools to incorporate sex education into topics in Biology, Social Studies and Core Science. This is, however, done on few occasions, and consequently adolescents have insufficient knowledge about the consequences of sexual behaviours. This results in early initiation into sex by many adolescents who copy blindly from TV and from the Internet undesirable sexual behaviours leading to undesirable consequences. This implies that the sources from which adolescents obtain sex information can affect their sexual behaviour. To find out the effect of sex information sources on adolescent sexual behaviour, a survey questionnaire was administered to a probabilistic sample of 340 students and followed with focus group discussions. Descriptive statistics and multiple regressions were used to analyze the data. The results showed a strong positive correlation between interpersonal sources of sex-related information and age at first sexual encounter. The study, therefore, provided the bases for recommendations for policy and practice.