The determinants of health behaviours among adolescents

The main objective of the study is to examine the effect of maternal age on adverse birth outcomes specifically preterm birth, termination or abortion, small for gestational age and low weight at birth. Third round of National Family and Health Survey data (2005-06) has been used for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed and age of the women were divided into three categories like 1) less than equal to 19 years, 2) 20-34 years and 3) more than equal to 35 years. Finding shows young maternal age has a higher risk of adverse birth outcomes such as low weight at birth and preterm delivery. They also reported seven times more of delivered premature birth than adult mothers of the study sample. It also comes from the analysis that women with less education and belongs to lower socio-economic strata have a high probability of adverse birth outcome. Complications during pregnancy are also found higher among young women as compare to adult women. From the study it is found that there is an association between education and wealth with adverse birth outcome along with younger maternal age.

Adolescent risk taking behaviours have become important policy issues in South Africa which is faced with a myriad of social and health problems among youth. HIV prevalence rates are high, adolescent rates are among the highest in the world, substance and alcohol abuse are high among teenagers and rape cases perpetuated by boys to girls in these age groups have increased. In response to these issues, a study on Risk Behaviour Among School Adolescents was undertaken.

A multi-cluster sampling was used to collect data covering 7 schools and 1065 students in Grades 9 and 11. Considering the sensitivity of the questions, need for honesty responses and the high literacy levels of the group, self-completion questionnaires were used. Logistic regressions were used to model the effects of ever had sex, frequency of sex and sexual partners. For this analysis these were reduced to binary outcomes.

Parental control and peer pressure have emerged as the strongest predictors of teenage sexual activities. Also, the roles of the family and religious institutions as protective factors have been established. Peer pressure emerged as the most important risk factor. One important observation is that youth who have accurate knowledge are more likely to take protective action.

This descriptive study investigated the influence of internet use on the sexual behaviour of 413 young persons aged 10-24 years selected from households in Ibadan North Local Government Area, Nigeria. Mean age of males was 21.7 + 3.4 years while that of females was 20.9 + 3.2 years. Main source of information about the internet was friends (63.3%) and 99.3% accessed the internet from cybercafé. Sending and receiving mails (55.0%) and online chatting (34.1%) were main activities involved in. Seventy-two percent had ever stumbled on pornographic sites and reactions to the scenes included closure of the sites (females, 57.5%; males, 38.7%), glancing through before closing (females, 30.1%; males, 46.7%) and minimizing page to view later (females, 12.3%; males, 13.6%). Post-exposure influence on behaviour were desire to know more about sexual activities (45.0%) and an urge to have sex (31.7%). Twenty-seven percent of daily internet users who had ever watched pornography sites had practiced what was viewed. More males than females (95% CI OR =1.245-6.465) were likely to report a change in sexual behaviour. There is a need for interventions aimed at reducing exposure to sexual content on internet targeting young persons especially the males and cybercafé operators.

Adolescence face many pressures and decisions that often occur simultaneously. Research has shown that many health risk behaviors occur in combination with one another, yet it is often unclear which behavior comes first. Substance use increases the probability that an adolescent will initiate sexual activity at an earlier age which may lead to unprotected sexual intercourse, and have multiple partners which might impacts their sexual and reproductive health systems such as by contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV/AIDS. Therefore, an attempt has been made to study the Indian female late adolescents’ substance use, risky sexual behavior and resulting of impacts on their sexual and reproductive health systems. Uni-variate, bi-variate was used to see the percentage distributions and by different background characteristics and multivariate analysis was applied in order to examine the most important predictors of their substance use and risky sexual behavior. Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient to see if there were any significant relationships between their risky behaviours and impacting of their sexual and reproductive health systems. Hence it proved to have a strong statistically significant positive correlation between risky behavior and impacting on their sexual & reproductive health systems (rho=0.286,p<.000

Around 151 million cases of curable STIs are found in south and south-east Asia out of 340 million cases globally. India is home to the highest number of adolescents in the world who suffers from lack the knowledge and power they need to make informed sexual and reproductive health choices. The present paper tries to understand prevalence of reproductive tract infection and sexually transmitted infection (RTI/STI) and treatment seeking behavior among married adolescent women aged 15-19 years in India using District Level Household (DLHS, 2007-08) data. Around 15 percent of women reported to have any symptoms of RTI/STI. Main symptom reported by adolescent women is low backache, pain in the lower abdomen, pain during intercourse and itching or irritation over vulva. Factors analysis shows the concentration of diseases in three clusters - infection in around the vulva, other reproductive infection and abnormal discharge; and intercourse related problems. Major predictors of both symptoms of reproductive infections and treatment seeking behavior from multivariate analysis are age, education, wealth, region and awareness about RTI/STI. Awareness about the transmission of RTIs/STIs is low among adolescents. Hence, it is important to have proper knowledge about RTI/STI among adolescents.

Chinese urban youth cannot naturally comply with social rules and norms and are prone to conduct problem behaviors within the context of accelerating urbanization of youth population. Based on 1st China Youth Reproductive Health Survey data, using Binary Logit Model, this paper analyses the factors influencing urban youth’s occurrence of premarital sex, smoking addiction and pornography addicts and the differences among the three types of problem behaviors. The results show that three types of problem behaviors occurred more among boys than girls and especially smoking addiction is a prominent problem behavior in boys. Parents with higher education level, living with two biological parents, being a student, having siblings, and living in a developed eastern city are protective factors for problem behaviors among urban youth. While youth from high income families are more likely to conduct problem behaviors compared with their counterparts from low income families. Our study point out that behavioral intervention for reducing problem behavior in urban youth can be more effective when taking a comprehensive “government-school-family” perspective.

The association between risky sexual behaviours and substance uses among Ghanaian youth were investigated.
An in-school cross-sectional representative survey was conducted among 12-18-year- old youth (N=1165, response rate =90%). Logistic regression analyses were employed to investigate the association between substance use and risky sexual behaviours.
Of all adolescents, 25% (28% boys and 23% girls) were sexually experienced. The mean age for first sexual intercourse was 14.8 years (14.4 years for boys and 15.1 years for girls). Among the sexually experienced, 31% had multiple sexual partners. Older age (OR=3.4, 95% CI=1.7-3.4) and rural residency (OR=1.5, 95% CI=1.1-2.1) were independently associated with sexual debut while only older age (OR=2.4, 95% CI=1.7-3.4) was associated with condom use. Additionally, smoking (OR=3.7, 95% CI=2.0-6.8), tawa use (OR=2.4, 95% CI=1.3-4.7), tobacco use (OR=2.8, 95% CI=1.7-4.7) drunkenness (OR=1.7, 95% CI=1.1-2.8) and marijuana use (OR=3.3, 95% CI=1.6-7.0) were independently associated with sexual debut. Furthermore, all substance uses studied were associated with having one or multiple sexual partners.
Substance use seems to be a gateway for risky sexual behaviours among adolescents. Interventions should take into account the likelihood of substance use among sexually experienced youth.

Objectives are to study the current prevalence of overweight and obesity among adolescents in Egypt from 2000 to 2008, to estimate the prevalence of glucose disorders, hypertension, Lipid profile, and metabolic syndrome, and to investigate some related risk factors among 10 to 18 years old school adolescents. For assessing prevalence rates of overweight and obesity among adolescents, data from reports of other cross-sectional studies carried out by NNI (2000-2005) and EDHS, 2008 were compared. To estimate the prevalence of glucose disorders, hypertension, lipid profile, and metabolic syndrome, a randomized stratified cluster-sample of preparatory and secondary school students was used. BMI was calculated and referred to corresponding international reference values for age and sex. A fasting blood sample was drawn to assess lipid profile and fasting plasma insulin. Overweight and obesity are prevalent among Egyptian adolescents of both sexes, and at least for girls the prevalence has increased in the last few years. Pre-diabetic state was present among 16.4% of adolescents. The crude prevalence of hypertension is 1.4% The overall proportion of adolescents with high total cholesterol is 6.0 %; the proportion with high LDL-cholesterol is 7.5 %, with high triglycerides 8.2 %, and with low HDL cholesterol 9.4 %. Conclusions; over

Individuals with higher parental supervision are less likely to engage in teenage risky behaviors. Using a quantitative measurement of parental supervision instead of proxies, I confirm this negative relationship with a PSID-CDS sample of teenagers from 10 to 18
years old. Using lagged measurements of time supervision (observed at 5 to 12 years old), OLS results show a negative relationship with maternal time for risky behaviors engaged recently (i.e. smoked cigarettes in the past month, drank alcohol at least once a week in the past year). With a household fixed effects estimation that removes unobserved family-specific heterogeneity, the paternal role emerges among health risky behaviors measured over the long span (e.g. ever smoked a cigarette). A separate estimation that allows for non-linear effects of parental time shows that the negative influence of parents are present among those who have received the most amount of time supervision during the pre-adolescent period.