PARENTS PERCEPTION AND ATTITUDE REGARDING SEXUALITY EDUCATION FOR IN-SCHOOL ADOLESCENTS IN IBADAN SOUTHEAST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, IBADAN, OYO STATE

Abstract

Implementing sexuality education curriculum for adolescents in Nigeria has been very challenging. With a highly decentralized, ethnically and religiously diverse and heterogeneous population, Nigeria typifies the complexity of adopting Family Life and HIV/AIDS Education. There is a need to investigate perceptions towards sex education implementation, especially opinions and perspectives from parents in designing the sex education programs particularly in the study area where there is dearth of information regarding the subject matter. This study investigated parents’ knowledge, perception and attitude regarding sexuality education for in-school adolescents in Ibadan South-East Local Government Area. This study is a descriptive cross-sectional design. A multistage sampling method was employed and a sample of five hundred (500) parents that have adolescent (10-19 years) participated in the study. A validated semi-structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The knowledge score of the respondent was scaled between 0-27 with Yes =2, No=1 and I don’t know =0. When categorized on an ordinal scale of good, fair and poor, Poor =0-10, Fair =11-20 and Good =21–27. Perception score was scaled 0-26, 0-22 for poor perception, 23-26 for good perception. Attitude score was scaled between 11-55; category 11-40 was assigned “negative attitude” while 41-55 was assigned “positive attitude”. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and Chi-square test at p= 0.05. Respondents’ mean age was 43.76±8.1 years, 55.6% of the respondents were female, majority, 55.6% were Christians and 97.4% were married. Mean knowledge score was 22.35±4.5; respondents with poor, fair and good knowledge on family life and HIV/AIDS were 2.4%, 22.6% and 75% respectively. There was a mixed reaction when the respondents were asked if sexuality education teach children on how to have sex. About one-fourth of the respondents (37.0%) said yes while almost half of the respondents (49.0%) said “No” with 13.2% reporting that “they don’t know”. The mean perception score was 22.69±3.08; 68.4% of the respondents had good perception towards sexuality education among in-school adolescents. Some of the respondents (50.2%) believed that sexuality education should be taught in all classes in secondary school. The mean attitudinal score was 42.61±4.7; 67.2% of the respondents had a positive attitude towards sexuality education among in-school adolescents. Most of the respondents reported that health professional/trained expert are in the best position to teach sexuality education in secondary schools and the mean age for introduction of sex education to adolescent was 12.97±9.7. Among those who have not discussed sexual related issues with adolescent, “lack of time” was the most reported reason (26.1%). Government (34.6%) and school authority (27.4%) were perceived to be the barrier to implementing sexuality education in schools. The level of education (p=0.006) and class of index adolescent child (p=0.000) was found to be significantly associated with respondents’ perception of sexuality education to in-school adolescents. The result showed that most of the parents wanted sexuality education to be taught at all levels in secondary schools. Based on the findings, it was recommended that there was need for more advocacy and parents’ inclusion in the designing of sex education programs.