Adolescents involve in many changes and these changes sometimes incongruent, contributing to teenagers’ confusion, lack of confidence, and lack of restraint. These impacts may lead them to make wrong decisions in risky circumstances and engage in harmful manners, including sexual behaviors. There is a higher incidence of sexual behaviors among adolescents than other groups because the consequences of dynamic sexual development and the influence of dramatically increasing sexual hormones lead to high sexual drives and craving to know about sex. In Thailand, as society changes in terms of increasing nuclear families, parents appear to not have enough time to take care of their children like in the past. As a consequence, the children have direct risks for sexual behaviors.
Most adolescents lack of awareness and are unable to control themselves in terms of expressing appropriate behaviors with opposite genders. These issues lead to risky sexual behavior. In the developmental stage of adolescents, they crave to know about—and try to do—new things, but they do not realize that they are immature and lack of experiences and life skills. Therefore, due to being unaware of the consequences of having pre-marital sex, they might face many problems, such as unwanted pregnancy, seeking criminal abortion, unsafe abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases. The severity and rate of these impacts have been dramatically increasing amongst adolescents (Saifon Eakwarangkorn, 2012: Kungploy Aeiwittayasuporn, and Ornnicha Pomeanthip, 2011).
A study of the relationship between sexual education, self-control, and communication in the family regarding sexual risk behaviors in terms of being with opposite genders among vocational students is needed in order to gain more understanding and develop a program for providing education to adolescents, as well as for preventing sexual risk factors in terms of being suitable for vocational students’ contexts in Northern Thailand.
Purpose:
The purposes of this correlational research study will determine the relationship between knowledge in sex education, family communication, self-control and sexual risk behaviors and explore the predictability of knowledge in sex education, family communication, and self-control on sexual risk behaviors of adolescent vocational students.
Methods:
The samples will be 328 adolescent students aged between 15-19 years old who are studying in vocational school in Thailand. Five assessment tools including one questionnaire and four measurement scales will be used for collecting data, as following: 1) demographic questionnaire, 2 knowledge in sex education scale 3) family communication scale 4) self- control scale and 5) sexual risk behaviors scale. Data will be analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Pearson’ product-moment collected and multiple regression analysis.
Results:
The expected results will be as follow;
1) Self- control, knowledge in sex education and family communication whether relationship with Sexual risk behaviors of adolescent students. 2) Self- control, knowledge in sex education and family communication whether predict sexual risk behaviors of adolescent students.
Conclusion:
The result of this study will be beneficial for health professionals, educators and staff who have been working closely with vocational adolescent students. The results will help to know about basic information and to get more understandings. These data will be useful for planning health education in class and developing program for preventing risk behaviors in vocational school.