PROMOTING HEALTHY SEXUALITY AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN A FAITH-BASED ORGANISATION IN ISOLO TOWN, LAGOS NIGERIA

Abstract

Introduction: This study aimed at ascertaining the sexual risk taking behaviour of the young people of a faith-based organisation, their perceptions of risk/vulnerability as well as the mechanisms employed to avoid risk. Attention was particularly paid to the influence of faith on these. It had as its overall aim a provision of a behavioural change health educational intervention aimed at correcting misperceptions on issues of sexuality and encouraging adoption and sustenance of healthful sexual behaviour. An assessment of the effect of this intervention was also done.
Materials and Methods: This project is a tri-phasic intervention research. The first phase was aimed at situation analysis as well obtaining an in-depth contextual understanding of the research issue amongst this group of interest. This was conducted using a focused group discussion and a questionnaire-based survey with a pre-test post-test design with control group. There were two focus groups a male and a female group each homogenous for sex. The male group had six discussants while the female had seven. The participants for the questionnaire based survey were selected by simple random sampling. There were 137 and 134 respondents pre- and post-test respectively for the study group and 124 and 127 respondents respectively for the control group. The required sample size was 118 respondents. The second phase was a health educational intervention aimed at promoting common grounds in healthy, respectable, responsible and safe sexuality and promoting adoption /reinforcement of positive behaviours. The third phase was an assessment of the effect of the intervention by comparing the pre and post interventional surveys of the study and the control groups.
Results: Current sexual activity occurs (31%) among young people of faith based organisations though sexual abstinence, whether primary or secondary, is still quiet agreeable among young people of faith based organisation and they appear quiet interested in strengthening influences to sustain such behaviour. There was 40% prevalence of primary abstinence and secondary abstinence of 3yrs duration was as high as 50.7% for female respondents, when reduced to 1year duration it was nearly 70% for both sexes. The mean age and standard deviation (SD) of first sexual intercourse for male respondents was 15.9 ± 4.4yrs (median =16.5 years) and for females 18.08 ± 4.4yrs (median 18.00years). Work exposure, frequency of attendance at religious services, ‘born-again’ and Holy Spirit baptism experiences and the duration of these were found to
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be significant determinants of sexuality indicator outcomes for these young people. Post-intervention there was a statistically significant increase for both sexes in the desire for provision of sexuality education in Christian youth fellowships (p=0.03) and in the indicators for adoption of risk reducing behaviours and perception of what sex is.
Among other findings the focused group discussion provided for a better contextual understanding of young people what young people consider as sex/virginity, the influence of gender discriminations on young peoples sexuality and what young people do as ‘alternative sex’ behaviour- insights that are quite useful for sexuality programming and intervention design.
Conclusions: There is an unmet need for common ground healthy faith, science and reality compliant sexuality education among young people of FBO. Very interestingly the young people of these FBO are desirous, as shown in the findings, of fora designed to address these needs quite on the contrary to fears expressed by leaders of many such FBOs.

PROMOTING HEALTHY SEXUALITY AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN A FAITH-BASED ORGANISATION IN ISOLO TOWN, LAGOS NIGERIA