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Tuesday, November 3, 2009: 2:45 PM
Learning Objective 1: Discuss adolescent perceptions about the costs and rewards of teen parenting.
Learning Objective 2: Integrate teen perceptions into policies and programming in order to ensure adolescents have realistic perceptions of the parenting experience.
While teen pregnancy rates are declining around the world, selected groups of adolescents continue to experience teen births and the potential for associated negative consequences. Although many adults agree on the costs associated with teen parenting, the attitudes of teens toward the parenting experience are not known. The purpose of this descriptive study is to determine teens’ perceptions of adolescent births and their thoughts on adolescent sexuality. The Thoughts on Teen Parenting Survey (TTPS) was designed to measure demographic variables, teen perspectives on the costs and rewards of teen parenting, and various adolescent beliefs about teen sexual activity, pregnancy, and births. Following rigorous analysis for content and construct validity and reliability and approval by the Institutional Review Board, the survey was administered to 695 adolescents from throughout the state of study. The purposive sample of teens was obtained from school health classes; students providing assent and parent/guardian permission completed the survey and received a nominal incentive. Adolescents were asked to provide brief demographic data related to ethnic group, age, gender, religiosity, income, presence of parents in the home, having a teen parent, and having a sibling who experienced teen parenting. The survey yields a composite score which measures teen thoughts on the positive or negative consequences of the teen parenting experience. Individual item responses and aggregate data from the composite survey are valuable in order to determine teens’ attitudes toward adolescent parenting. Demographic data is linked to this composite score using paired T-test comparisons of means in order to determine if different groups have cohort-specific perceptions. Future use of this survey as a pre/post-test measure for interventions addressing the realities of teen parenting will be discussed. Findings on perceptions may be used to develop messages and public policies oriented to specific groups of teens and to design prevention strategies targeted at the perceptions of youth. It is conjectured that messages, public policies, and interventions may be most effective if derived from and informed by the insights of adolescents.