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Medical Research Council - MRC podcasts, Influences on teenage sexual activity

Influences on teenage sexual activity

HL: You're listening to a Medical Research Council podcast with Hazel Lambert. I'm at the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow where Dr Marion Henderson has been leading the first study to look at what influences young people's sexual behaviour beyond formal sex education. It's part of a wider initiative to learn more about how schools can affect the health and well being of their pupils.Dr Henderson, why is knowing about sexual behaviour important? MH: This actual paper was looking at rates of sexual activity and obviously the more sexual activity there is, there seems to be more of a risk of pregnancy, even when people claim to be using contraception.

HL: You analysed data provided by almost 5,000 pupils from 24 different schools in Scotland, what did you find overall?

MH: Basically I'd started off by recognising from looking at our data set that there was a huge variation between schools in levels of sexual activity even when you levelled the playing field, in other words took account of the pupil composition in the schools. Even when you sort of say right we've taken account of different deprivation and different types of parenting and so on, we still found these huge variations from about 23 to about 61% sexual activity at age 16. So what can explain it? And I mean all schools are doing their utmost best to teach sex education as well as they can and we have no idea where we'd be with this sort of problem in our society without schools doing that. But when I did all the analysis, we found that actually these things didn't really explain the variation and that what it seemed to be about was not just an individual's deprivation but whether that individual was in a very deprived area generally. HL: So catchment area's really influential in teenagers decisions of whether indulge in sexual activity. What did you find there?

MH: What this analysis showed was that it's not about your own individual deprivation but that you can be influenced by how much is around you in your neighbourhood or school catchment area. If you were an affluent person but you went to school where the overall area was extremely deprived, you would probably be more inclined to experiment and have sexual activity younger than if you went to a school with lots and lots of affluent people around you. And likewise if you're deprived and you go to an affluent school, that might be protective for you. So it's not just about your individual deprivation, it's about the overall neighbourhood deprivation as well. People that are from deprived backgrounds tend towards earlier sexual experience and higher sexual risk taking and likewise affluent the opposite. So obviously if you were affluent which is generally protective as an individual, you might still be more inclined to take sexual risk because that's what perhaps the majority of your peer group are doing, or perhaps it's just that it affects your aspirations for the future because maybe you don't see as many mentors that would incline you towards wanting to stick in at school and have a career. HL: When you're talking about sexual activity, obviously the outcome is early or teenage pregnancy, how common is that? MH: There's about 1 in 5 young people have at least pregnancy in their teenage years in Scotland and of course sadly 1 in 10 go on to termination. That suggested pregnancies weren't desired or what they wanted in their lives, so therefore it would fantastic if that could be prevented. HL: How did you get the information from young people? Because it must be really difficult to get them to talk about their sexual experiences.

MH: One of the core ways was to do a school based questionnaire where when they were in personal and social education class settings they were sat out in exam conditions so that they couldn't look on to see somebody else's answers, it was private and at the end of it the questionnaires were sealed in envelopes and taken in and brought back to the unit and we started analysing the data. HL: Now that you know that there are these social factors that are influencing young people, what do you think you could do to help them?

MH: We know there's a lot of teenage mums out there, well you know, if we're going to break the cycle of deprivation perhaps we have to really think about how to make sure they're not socially excluded and keeping them in education and making sure there still could be a potential bright future for them and trying to engage with parents because we are aware that parents can have a huge influence on what happens in the future lives of the young people HL: Hazel Lambert MH: Dr Marion Henderson


Influences on teenage sexual activity

HL: You're listening to a Medical Research Council podcast with Hazel Lambert. I'm at the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow where Dr Marion Henderson has been leading the first study to look at what influences young people's sexual behaviour beyond formal sex education. It's part of a wider initiative to learn more about how schools can affect the health and well being of their pupils.Dr Henderson, why is knowing about sexual behaviour important? MH: This actual paper was looking at rates of sexual activity and obviously the more sexual activity there is, there seems to be more of a risk of pregnancy, even when people claim to be using contraception.

HL: You analysed data provided by almost 5,000 pupils from 24 different schools in Scotland, what did you find overall?

MH: Basically I'd started off by recognising from looking at our data set that there was a huge variation between schools in levels of sexual activity even when you levelled the playing field, in other words took account of the pupil composition in the schools. Even when you sort of say right we've taken account of different deprivation and different types of parenting and so on, we still found these huge variations from about 23 to about 61% sexual activity at age 16. So what can explain it? And I mean all schools are doing their utmost best to teach sex education as well as they can and we have no idea where we'd be with this sort of problem in our society without schools doing that. But when I did all the analysis, we found that actually these things didn't really explain the variation and that what it seemed to be about was not just an individual's deprivation but whether that individual was in a very deprived area generally. HL: So catchment area's really influential in teenagers decisions of whether indulge in sexual activity. What did you find there?

MH: What this analysis showed was that it's not about your own individual deprivation but that you can be influenced by how much is around you in your neighbourhood or school catchment area. If you were an affluent person but you went to school where the overall area was extremely deprived, you would probably be more inclined to experiment and have sexual activity younger than if you went to a school with lots and lots of affluent people around you. And likewise if you're deprived and you go to an affluent school, that might be protective for you. So it's not just about your individual deprivation, it's about the overall neighbourhood deprivation as well. People that are from deprived backgrounds tend towards earlier sexual experience and higher sexual risk taking and likewise affluent the opposite. So obviously if you were affluent which is generally protective as an individual, you might still be more inclined to take sexual risk because that's what perhaps the majority of your peer group are doing, or perhaps it's just that it affects your aspirations for the future because maybe you don't see as many mentors that would incline you towards wanting to stick in at school and have a career. HL: When you're talking about sexual activity, obviously the outcome is early or teenage pregnancy, how common is that? MH: There's about 1 in 5 young people have at least pregnancy in their teenage years in Scotland and of course sadly 1 in 10 go on to termination. That suggested pregnancies weren't desired or what they wanted in their lives, so therefore it would fantastic if that could be prevented. HL: How did you get the information from young people? Because it must be really difficult to get them to talk about their sexual experiences.

MH: One of the core ways was to do a school based questionnaire where when they were in personal and social education class settings they were sat out in exam conditions so that they couldn't look on to see somebody else's answers, it was private and at the end of it the questionnaires were sealed in envelopes and taken in and brought back to the unit and we started analysing the data. HL: Now that you know that there are these social factors that are influencing young people, what do you think you could do to help them?

MH: We know there's a lot of teenage mums out there, well you know, if we're going to break the cycle of deprivation perhaps we have to really think about how to make sure they're not socially excluded and keeping them in education and making sure there still could be a potential bright future for them and trying to engage with parents because we are aware that parents can have a huge influence on what happens in the future lives of the young people HL: Hazel Lambert MH: Dr Marion Henderson