Your advice, my choice: a case study of adolescents' reproductive health choices at Nadowli-Kaleo district of the Upper West region of Ghana

Abstract

The aim of this study is to elicit adolescents' responses on their reproductive health choices. It was designed to assess the reproductive health choices of adolescent in the Nadowli -kaleo district in the Upper West region. A quantitative cross sectional survey was employed in the study. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to sample 376 adolescents between the ages of 15-24 years of age to respond to a structured questionnaire. The data was cleaned, entered into Statistical Package for Social Sciences for analysis and the results presented in descriptive tables. Parental sources of information emerged as the highest source of information for adolescents as 356 of the 376 respondents representing 94.8% indicated they got information from parents. The second most important source of information on reproductive health of 92.4% came from peers. 64.0% of the respondents indicated that service providers were friendly to clients but did not explain details. Majority of the respondents, 271 (72.1%) agreed that many adolescents engage in unprotected sexual practices. The study revealed that knowledge on reproductive health choice was average and many adolescent acquire information on reproductive health choices from parents and peers. In addition, study indicate that unprotected sex was common among adolescents whilst knowledge on safe abortion was low indicating that majority of the adolescents who get pregnant accidentally may have terminated the pregnancy using unsafe methods.