Magnitude of youth risky sexual behavior and Associated factors among high school students in Debate district north west, Ethiopia

Abstract

World Health Organization classifies Youth as age between 15-24 years. A person who is involved in one or more of having more than one sexual partner, sex without condom &initiating sex before age of 18 is considered to be risky sexual behavior. Behaviors predispose youths to several health problems including STIs, HIV unwanted pregnancy abortion contributes to 2/3 of premature deaths. Objective: The study aims to determine the magnitude of youth risky Sexual behavior & identify its associated factors among youths in Debate District, high schools, North West Ethiopia, 2022. Methods: A school based cross sectional study design was used to conduct the study at Debate District high schools youths from May to Jun 2022 on 592 youth, Multi-stages stratified sampling technique was followed to identify sampling units and the calculated samples size was proportionally allocated to all class levels of (grade 9, 10,11&12). Systematic sampling technique was applied on randomly selected two high schools to select youths from registration. After taking informed consent Data was collected by self-administered structured questionnaire contains questions adapted from several studies on youth RSB. Pre-test was don on 5% of questioner. After checking completeness, data was entered into epi data 3.1 versions for edition & cleaning by double entry verification then export to SPSS version 21 for analysis. Descriptive statics was computed to show the distribution of the variables. Variables significant at p-value of <0.25 in the bivariate was used for the final multivariable logistic regression analysis. AOR, 95% CI and p-value was used to determine the strength of association & statistical significance. Result: The overall risky sexual behavior of participants was found to be 25.56%, 95% CI (22.28% -29.19%) The mean age of sexual initiation was (16.9 ±1.9) years. Visited night club[AOR= 10.578; CI 95% (4.212-26.413)] Knowledge [AOR=8.755; CI 95% (5.039-15.212)], social media use [AOR=2.314; CI 95% (1.329-4.026)], tasting Substance [AOR=2.309 ; CI (95%) =(1.329- 4.010)], school type [AOR= 0.537 95% CI (0.314, 0.919), Source of pocket money [AOR=3.964; CI 95% (1.263-12.443)], Parent youth discussion [(AOR =0.378: CI [95%) =(0.223,0.617)] & youth friend discussed [AOR=2.195 CI 95% (1.333- 3.614)] were factors significantly associated with RSB Conclusions & recommendation: The magnitude of risky sexual behavior was high. Visiting night club, Knowledge, social media Use, testing Substance, Source of pocket money & discussion with friends were factors significantly increases the odds of RSB among youth whereas Parent youth discussion & school type decreases it. In order to protect youths from risky sexual behaviors, schools should focus on risk redaction through health promotion, strengthen youth clubs and youths social media utilization souled be considered.