Analysis of adolescent sexual health awareness and sexual education needs among parents of 10 − 19 year old students in a city of Yunnan Province

Objective To explore the effective measures of school adolescent sexual health education in the aspect of home-school cooperation through understanding the parents’ adolescent sexual health awareness and sexual health education needs.

Methods Stratified random cluster sampling was used to recruit 7 389 parents of students aged 10 − 19 as study subjects from 35 primary schools, junior high schools and senior high schools in a city of Yunnan Province. A cross-sectional survey was conducted through a self-made questionnaire. The questionnaire includes general demographic, family information, adolescent sexual health awareness and the needs of adolescent sexual health education in schools. Among them, the awareness of adolescent sexual health includes 6 aspects, with a full score of 10. The higher the score, the better the parents’ awareness of adolescent sexual health.

Results The overall awareness rate of adolescent sexual health among 7 389 parents was 55.43%, with an average score of (4.59 ± 0.03). The scores of mothers were higher than those of fathers (F = 43.15, P < 0.01). There were significant differences in the scores of adolescent sexual health awareness among parents of different occupations (F = 293.74, P < 0.01), among which the average score of parents who were farmers was the lowest (3.88 ± 4.05). Parents with different education background, marital status and income level had significant differences in adolescent sexual health awareness scores (all P < 0.01). The survey showed that “lack of sexual health awareness” was the main reason (40.75%) to carry out family sexual health education difficultly. The most desirable school sexuality education model for parents was theme class meeting (43.88%).

Conclusion The overall awareness of parents’ adolescent sexual health needs to be improved. When sexual health knowledge are disseminated to parents, the father should be strengthened to increase overall awareness so as to build a “bisexual” family education model with both parents’ participation. School sexual health education in rural areas should be paid more attentions. Training of trainers of rural school teachers should be improved, and development and utilization of targeted sexual health teaching resources should be promoted.