Abstract

Sex education is a vital aspect of health education. It provides factual knowledge to assist adolescents to avoid sex related problems. Due to the sensitive nature of sex education many adolescents rely on internet resources for information on sex education because it offers information in a confidential manner. The study assessed and compared the determinants of internet based resources for sex education among in and out of school adolescents in Kogi State. The study was comparative cross-sectional in nature and involved comparison of selected in and out of school adolescents in Okene. Data was collected from 600 adolescents. Multistage sampling technique was used to select the required study subjects. Simple frequencies, chi-square and multivariate analysis were carried out. The mean age for in-school adolescents was 14.52± 2.17 years, while the mean age for out-of-school adolescents was 17.19± 1.54 years. Prevalence of internet use for sex education among the in-school adolescents was 41 and 59.2% for the out-of-school adolescents. The most searched sex education topic among in-school adolescents was sexual activities (73.5%) while sexual abuse (75.8%) was the most searched sex education topic among out-of-school adolescents. The determinants of use of internet-based resources for sex education among the in and out-of-school adolescents were curiosity, religiosity and less information from teachers. The study concluded that internet use for sex education is more prevalent among out of school adolescents compared to their in-school counterpart.

Key words: Sex education, adolescents, in-school, out of school, internet based resources, determinants.