Risk Behaviour Among High School Adolescents in the North West Province, South Africa

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.