A Study on the Sources of Sexual Knowledge Acquisition among High School Students in Northwest Iran

Background: Considering the importance of sexual drive among teenagers, parental and societal concerns about teenagers’ sexual drives, particularly in religious communities such as Iran is of practical importance; therefore, this present research was designed to study students’ sources of sexual knowledge acquisition. Methods: This research was carried out among 2600 high school students in the cities of Tabriz, Urmia, and Ardabil in Northwest Iran. Students were selected through a multi-staged randomized sampling method in Tabriz and by the convenience method in Ardabil and Urmia. The instrument was a self-administered questionnaire, which included 19 different resources. The resources were categorized into seven main groups and the results were statistically analyzed with SPSS version 11.5 software. Results: Based on the mean score of each of the seven main groups of resources, the ranking order of the resources was as follows: 1) immediate friends and peers 2) pictures, magazines, and books 3) audiovisual (CDs, foreign movies, satellite programs, and the Internet) 4) school trainings 5) physicians, clergy, and counseling centers 6) family (parents and siblings) and 7) close family members. The differences between the resources were statistically significant (P value= 0.0001). Conclusion: Results of the present study emphasize that teenagers should be educated in different areas of sexual problems with the help of parents, schools, and official sources and centers in the society as confident sources of obtaining sexual knowledge. There is a need to prepare a codified educational curriculum in different levels in order to offer teenagers’ sexual education in the form of books or specific school credits.