Abstract

Background: Parent-adolescent communication regarding sexual and reproductive health issues is more likely to reduce adolescent risk-taking sexual behaviors. However, there is a paucity of evidence about adolescent parent communication in northern part of Ethiopia.

Objective: To assess parent-adolescent communication about sexual and reproductive health issues and associated factors among preparatory school adolescents in Haiyk preparatory school.

Methods: A cross sectional study was employed with Simple random sampling technique among 332 students in Haiyk Preparatory school. Data were collected by Self-administered structured questionnaire. Self-administered anonymous questionnaires was applied to minimize social desirability bias and interviewer distortion that often limits the use of face to face interviews. Investigators were responsible to lead the whole situation of data collection process, to check the collected data for consistence, completeness, editing, and suspicious of irregularity. Data were entered to Epi-Data version 3.1 and transported to SPSS version 21 for further analysis. Binary Logistic regression with 95% Confidence interval was applied to identify association between explanatory variable and the outcome variable and 0.5 level of significance was taken. Variables p value less than 0.25 in binary logistic regression were included in multiple logistic regression.

Results: The percentage of adolescents who had communication about sexual and reproductive issues was nearly 83%. Of which, majority of student preferred to discuss with their peers than parent. Students whose parents age18 and below had 92% less likely to communicate with their parents on sexual and reproductive health issues as compared to students whose age is greater than 18 years old. Students whose parent’s educational status primary school has 2 times more likely to have parent adolescent communication as compared with students whose parent educational status were above grade eight. Students who were grade 11 had 78% less chance of parent adolescent communication about sexual and reproductive health issues than students of grade 12.

Conclusion and recommendations: Communication on sexual and reproductive health issues between adolescent and their parent was progressively increasing. Establish and facilitate peer to peer and parent student sexual and reproductive health open discussion among family members in general and between parents and children in particular to enhance positive peer influence gap and taboos.

Keywords: Parent; Adolescent; SRH; Communication and Ethiopia

Abbreviation: AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome; ANRS: Amhara National Regional State; ASRH: Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health; CDC: Communicable Disease Control; HIV: Human Immunodeficiency Virus; MOH: Ministry Of Health; RH: Reproductive Health; SRH: Sexual and Reproductive Health; SSA: Sub-Saharan Africa; STD: Sexually Transmitted Disease; STI: Sexually Transmitted Infections; USA: United States of America; WHO: World Health Organization; COR: Crude Odd Ratio; AOR: Adjacent Odd Ratio; SPSS: Software Project for Social Science