Suchergebnisse

The quality of drug data in the 1984 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 12,069 Rs in the original 1979 survey) is explored. Comparisons with other national surveys indicate that underreporting of use of illicit drugs other than marijuana appears to have taken place, & that light users of these drugs are underrepresented among the self-acknowledged users. Comparison with marijuana use reported four years earlier indicates that experimental marijuana users are much less likely than extensive users to acknowledge involvement. Even after controlling for f of use, underreporting is more common among technical high school dropouts & minorities. Not only individual characteristics but field conditions also contribute to underreporting. Familiarity with the interviewer, as measured by number of prior interviewing contacts, depresses drug use reporting. It is speculated that interviewer familiarity increases salience of normative standards & that participants respond not only in terms of their past familiarity but also in terms of their subjective expectations regarding the probability of a future encounter with the interviewer. 5 Tables, 49 References. Modified HA

The research that has been conducted to date on Vietnamese adolescents has focused on unprotected and unsanctioned sexual activity and its health consequences, specifically abortion and sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV. The question we pose in this article is whether this concern is warranted. Is the population community justified in limiting research on this population to early sexual activity and HIV risk? Even if the sexual behavior of young people can be considered problematic, are there perhaps other aspects of young peoples' lives to which more attention should be devoted? The literature on adolescent sexual behavior in Vietnam is reviewed and data on premarital sex and reproductive behavior are analyzed from a 1999 survey conducted in six provinces among nearly 1,500 adolescent boys and girls aged 15–22. Descriptive data on schooling and work are included in order to put the information on sexual activity in perspective. The data analysis reveals that, at least currently, the sexual behavior of unmarried adolescents in Vietnam is not what jeopardizes their health and well‐being.

We explore whether differential access to family-planning services and the quality of those services explain variability in uptake of contraception among young women in Malawi. We accomplish this by linking the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study, a longitudinal survey of young people, with the Malawi Service Provision Assessment collected in 2013–14. We also identify factors that determine choice of facility among those who use contraception. We find that the presence and characteristics of nearby facilities with contraception available did not appear to affect use. Rather, characteristics such as facility type and whether contraception was provided free of charge determined where women deciding to use contraception obtained their contraception. We argue that in a context where almost all respondents resided within 10 kilometers of a health facility, improving access to and quality of family-planning services may not markedly increase contraceptive use among young women without broader shifts in norms regarding childbearing in the early years of marriage.

This study investigates the reporting of premarital sex in rural southern Malawi. It summarizes the results of an interview‐mode experiment conducted with unmarried young women aged 15–21 in which respondents were randomly assigned to either an audio computer‐assisted self‐interview (ACASI) or a conventional face‐to‐face (FTF) interview. In addition, biomarkers were collected for HIV and three STIs: gonorrhea, chlamydia, and trichomoniasis. Prior to collecting the biomarkers, nurses conducted a short face‐to‐face interview in which they repeated questions about sexual behavior. The study builds on earlier research among adolescents in Kenya where we first investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of ACASI. In both Malawi and Kenya, the mode of interviewing and questions about types of sexual partners affect the reporting of sexual activity. Yet the results are not always in accordance with expectations. Reporting for "ever had sex" and "sex with a boyfriend" is higher in the FTF mode. When we ask about other partners as well as multiple lifetime partners, however, the reporting is consistently higher with ACASI, in many cases significantly so. The FTF mode produced more consistent reporting of sexual activity between the main interview and a subsequent interview. The association between infection status and reporting of sexual behavior is stronger in the FTF mode, although in both modes a number of young women who denied ever having sex test positive for STIs/HIV.

With the spread of formal schooling in sub‐Saharan Africa and delays in the age at marriage, a growing proportion of adolescents remain enrolled in school when they "come of age." As a consequence, more and more adolescents have to negotiate sexual maturation and sexual initiation in a vastly different context from that of prior generations. Using data from the 2004 National Survey of Adolescents conducted in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda, we investigate the empirical association between premarital sex and leaving school among those who were enrolled in school at the outset of adolescence (age 12). Discrete‐time logistic regression models show that, in general, girls are more likely than boys to leave school before completing secondary school, before completing primary school, and, among those completing primary school, before progressing to secondary school. Girls who complete primary school, however, do so at the same age as or a younger age than their male peers. Girls appear more vulnerable to leaving school once they engage in premarital sex. These findings can assist researchers, policymakers, program managers, and educators in understanding and addressing the challenges to educational attainment posed by the increasing proportion of school‐aged adolescents engaging in premarital sex.

This study reports the results of a primarily qualitative investigation of adolescent reproductive behavior in the Kassena‐Nankana District, an isolated rural area in northern Ghana, where traditional patterns of marriage, family formation, and social organization persist. The study is based on in‐depth interviews and focus‐group discussions with adolescents, parents, chiefs, traditional leaders, youth leaders, and health workers, supplemented by quantitative data from the 1996 wave of a panel survey of women of reproductive age conducted by the Navrongo Health Research Centre. The social environment that adolescent boys and girls in the Kassena‐Nankana District encounter and its links to reproductive behavior are described. The principal question is whether even in this remote rural area, the social environment has been altered in ways that have undermined traditional sexual and reproductive patterns. The survey data indicate a considerable increase in girls' education and the beginning of a decline in the incidence of early marriage. The qualitative data suggest that social institutions, systems, and practices such as female circumcision that previously structured the lives ofadokscent boys and girls have eroded, leading to an apparent increase in premarital sexual activity.

Using nationally representative survey data, this study explores gender‐role attitudes among unmarried adolescents aged 16–19 in Egypt, a society characterized by distinct and often segregated roles for men and women. Adolescents' views about desirable qualities in a spouse as well as more direct indicators of gender‐role attitudes are examined, including opinions about whether wives should defer to their husbands, share in household decision making, and have the responsibility for performing domestic tasks. The findings regarding spousal characteristics reflect strong gender differentiation. Girls and boys provide divergent profiles of an ideal spouse, profiles that reflect traditional gender roles. Girls are significantly less likely than boys to favor educational inequality between spouses, however. Neither boys nor girls have egalitarian gender‐role attitudes, although girls are significantly more likely to express less traditional attitudes. Multivariate analyses indicate that girls' and boys' attitudes do not vary consistently and significantly by socioeconomic background; in particular, increased schooling does not always promote egalitarian attitudes. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Using data from nearly 600 adolescents aged 12–19 in combination with data collected from 33 primary schools that the adolescents attended, this report explores whether certain aspects of the school environment affect the initiation of premarital sex among girls and boys in three districts of Kenya. The results suggest that, although neither the school nor the home appears to influence whether boys engage in sex prior to marriage, for girls, a school characterized by a gender‐neutral atmosphere appears to reduce the risk of their engaging in premarital sex. Furthermore, although policymakers in Kenya are clearly concerned with the problem of "schoolgirl pregnancy," the data indicate that in this sample, pregnancy is not the primary reason that girls leave school.