Knowledge attitudes and practices on reproductive and sexual health among out of school youth in rural India

Parasuram Vinayaga Murthy, Sri Venkateswara University

In India, there is pressing need to conduct research focusing on youth especially in the rural areas since many girls and boys never enrolled or dropout and not exposed to systematic instructions in reproductive and sexual matters. Hence, the need for providing youth reproductive and sex health issues cannot be ignored, particularly in the context of early marriages, pregnancies prevalent in the community, pre-marital sex, unsafe sex and looming threat of STD’s especially HIV/AIDS. The aim of the study was to assess the influence of background characteristics on the knowledge, attitudes and practices on reproductive and sexual health issue among out of school rural youth. The sample size of the study was 450 out of school youth in the age group of 15-24 years in three differentially developed regions living in rural areas. To assess the youth’s knowledge, five indices were constructed on the aspects of 1) Changes during adolescence 2) Female reproductive system 3) Family planning 4) STD and HIV/AIDS and 5) Sexual matters. Similarly, all the same above indices except the index on changes during adolescence with regard to attitudes were constructed. Also, a separate index was developed on reproductive and sexual practices of youth. ANOVA test was applied to assess the influence of background characteristics of rural youth on their knowledge, attitudes and practices on reproductive and sexual matters. The study has shown that most of the background variables have significant influence on the reproductive and sexual issues.