Conceptions about sexuality and sex education of boys and girls at school-age

Abstract

According to Portuguese Law, Sex Education (SE) in schools is compulsory from elementary to secondary school levels. However, many SE projects do not consider the needs of their target audience, or their gender differences, which limits the programme effectiveness. In this work we sought to identify conceptions and needs concerned with human sexuality and SE of school-aged boys and girls (10 to 18 years old). Thus, we developed a questionnaire for the second and the third cycle of basic education students attending an Oporto school. We chose to carry out our own questionnaire in order to fit it to our methodology and we validated it with a pilot study. Questionnaire was filled in online and results were processed with SPSS statistical program. The questionnaire was filled by 397 students (192 females and 205 males). The average age of the respondents was 12.79 years old. Regarding the distribution of students by different school years we obtained: 85 at the 5th, 84 at the 6th, 55 at the 7th, 95 at the 8th, and 78 at the 9th. Data revealed significant differences between boys and girls in terms of sources of information, with girls preferring mother while boys preferring internet. Considering the school role in SE differences were found for the perception about teachers’ knowledge to respond to students’ questions, about to talk about sexuality in any class and about to participate in more SE activities at school. Regarding the SE role on youth development boys’ and girls’ opinions also differ for several topics. About the responsible persons by SE of the adolescents girls preferred more than boys mother and scholar psychologist. Subjects they want to learn more for girls were family concept and planning, sexual harassment and abuse and pregnancy, while for boys were sexual desire and sexual response and pleasure.