Okpalaku Chidinma Joycelyn, Ogubuike Chigozirim
School of Public Health, University of Port-Harcourt, Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.
Department of Community Medicine, University of Port-Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.
PLOS Glob Public Health. 2025 Jan 21;5(1):e0003148. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0003148. eCollection 2025.
Adolescent risky sexual behaviour is a public health problem with its deleterious outcomes. Parents are the most influential source of sexuality education to adolescent, yet adolescents' lack sexuality educations. The study explored barriers in parent-adolescent sexual-risk communication from both perspectives in Port-Harcourt LGA, Rivers State. A cross-sectional study design using explanatory sequential mixed methods approach was implemented. Three hundred and twenty nine in-school adolescents participated in the quantitative study and recruited using multi-stage sampling technique while 9 parents of adolescents and 16 adolescents participated in the qualitative study. A self-administered questionnaire was used to elicit information from the adolescents while an FGD and IDI guide was used to elicit information from in-school adolescents and parents respectively. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics and chi-square while the qualitative data was subjected to thematic analysis. The mean age of the adolescents was 16.0 ± 1.1 years and 55% were males. 21% of the parents had never discussed sex with their adolescents. The barriers identified from the adolescents' perspective were parental factors (parents being too busy, judgmental, low knowledge), individual factors (discomfort to initiate communication, lack of trust), religious and cultural factors. The barriers from the parents' perspective were shame to initiate communication, fear of outcome, feeling children are too young and lack of accurate information. The barriers to parent-adolescent communication featured interplay of parental, individual, cultural and religious factors. Parents should be trained to initiate timely and accurate sexuality education to the adolescent to curb adolescent risky sexual exploitations.
青少年危险性行为是一个会产生有害后果的公共卫生问题。父母是青少年性教育最具影响力的来源，但青少年却缺乏性教育。本研究从两个视角探讨了河流州哈科特港地方政府辖区内父母与青少年性风险沟通中的障碍。采用了解释性序列混合方法的横断面研究设计得以实施。329名在校青少年参与了定量研究，采用多阶段抽样技术进行招募，同时9名青少年家长和16名青少年参与了定性研究。使用自填式问卷从青少年中获取信息，而分别使用焦点小组讨论和深入访谈指南从在校青少年和家长中获取信息。定量数据采用描述性统计和卡方分析，而定性数据则进行主题分析。青少年的平均年龄为16.0 ± 1.1岁，55%为男性。21%的家长从未与他们的青少年讨论过性。从青少年视角确定的障碍包括父母因素（父母太忙、爱评判、知识水平低）、个人因素（开始沟通时感到不适、缺乏信任）、宗教和文化因素。从家长视角确定的障碍包括开始沟通时感到羞耻、害怕结果、觉得孩子太小以及缺乏准确信息。父母与青少年沟通的障碍体现了父母、个人、文化和宗教因素的相互作用。应该对父母进行培训，以便及时、准确地对青少年开展性教育，以遏制青少年危险性性剥削行为。
