The Contribution of School-level Factors to Contraceptive Use Among Adolescents in New York City Public High Schools PDF Download

Author: Deborah L. Kaplan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781303535253
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Every year approximately 17,000 adolescents ages 15-19 become pregnant in New York City. Most of these pregnancies are unintended and only a small percent of adolescents use effective contraception, with wide disparities by race/ethnicity and poverty level. While many studies have identified factors associated with contraceptive use, most research has focused on individual level factors, with little attention to the contribution of the school environment to sexual risk behavior and contraceptive use. This study investigates the effect of school-level factors on contraceptive use among adolescents in NYC public high schools before and after controlling for individual-level factors, and whether this effect varies with race/ethnicity. Using a cross-sectional design, the NYC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) individual-level datasets for 2007, 2009 and 2011 were linked to a school-level dataset. Variables were selected based on empirical findings on factors associated with sexual behaviors, including contraceptive use, by adolescents. The analytic sample included all YRBS respondents aged 14 or older who reported having sexual intercourse in the past three months and had complete responses to the YRBS questions on contraceptive use at last sex (N=8,054). The chi square test of significance was used to evaluate significant associations between independent variables and contraceptive use in bivariate analyses; variables with a p value