Keywords

Health literacy, Sexual health knowledge, Reproductive behaviors, Contraceptive use

Abstract

Background: Health knowledge plays a large role in health outcomes, especially those of racial and ethnic minorities. There is a lack of literature discussing the relation between sexual health knowledge obtained during adolescence and the reproductive behaviors of minority women later in life.

Purpose: To examine the association between sexual health knowledge during adolescence and subsequent contraception use among racial and ethnic minority women in adulthood.

Methods: Data from Waves I, III, and IV of the National Longitudinal Study if Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) was used to explore the relation between adolescent health knowledge and subsequent contraception use among women in adulthood. Univariate analyses were conducted to describe the distribution of sexual health knowledge score and binary indicator of high versus low during adolescence, as well as the prevalence of contraceptive use (measuring use and effectiveness) during early adulthood (Wave III) and adulthood (Wave IV) overall and stratified among the racial and ethnic groups. The frequency and prevalence were calculated for the binary measure of any contraception use and the three-level measure of effectiveness of contraception. Regression analyses Results with p ≤ 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant.

Results: The results of this study show a modest significant association between adolescent sexual health knowledge and contraception usage in early adulthood among the overall analytic sample. For the total analytic sample, the relative odds of contraceptive use in early adulthood are 25% higher in women with high sexual health knowledge in the total analytic sample. The relative odds of any overall contraceptive use in adulthood was 16% lower in those with high sexual health knowledge versus those with low knowledge.

Conclusions: It cannot be assumed that there is a direct correlation between knowledge and contraception use, or whether it impacts certain minorities more than others. Further studies should include larger sample sizes to understand how each ethnic minority is affected by sexual health knowledge.

Thesis Completion Year

2024

Thesis Completion Semester

Fall

Thesis Chair

Scheidell, Joy

College

College of Health Professions and Sciences

Thesis Discipline

Health Sciences

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus Access

None

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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Rights Statement

In Copyright