Olumide Abiodun, Oluwatosin Olu-Abiodun, Franklin Ani and Obafemi Sotunsa
Introduction: Very minimal efforts have been made, especially in rural settings to address adolescent sexual and reproductive health concerns, or to provide the required sexual and reproductive health services. The Study of adolescents’ knowledge, services utilization, and associated factors is pertinent to the design of appropriate program interventions.
Materials and methods: A junior secondary school-based cross-sectional study of 714 eligible Nigerian adolescents interviewed with the use of self-administered questionnaires. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted.
Results: About half of the respondents were knowledgeable about sexually transmitted infections while 31% were knowledgeable about fertility issues. The overall mean score for sexual and reproductive knowledge was 28.08±9.70 (out of a maximum of 48). The predictors of being knowledgeable were being male (AOR=3.048, p=0.028), and having regular access to a telephone (AOR=1.487, p=0.029) and the internet (AOR=1.554, p=0.022).Almost twothirds, (64.7%), of the respondents, had ever heard about sexual and reproductive health services while 51.0% had ever used the services. Schools were the main sources of information (29.7%). The predictors of service utilization were knowledge, regular access to telephone and parent-adolescent communication (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Sexual and reproductive health knowledge of in-school rural adolescents in Nigeria is fair but some misconceptions still exist. Service utilization, however, remains low largely due to lack of awareness. It is, therefore, important to design interventions that increase awareness of sexual and reproductive health issues; correct existing misconceptions, and to showcase and increase available RSH services using veritable tools including telephone and the internet.
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