Premarital sex behavior of teenager in Timor Tengah Utara Regency, East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia

Abstract

Objective

The objectives of this study were to comprehensively descript premarital sex behavior of teenagers in Timor Tengah Utara Regency and to identify the effect of self-esteem, self-concept and attitude toward premarital sex on premarital sex behavior.

Methods

Survey method was adopted for this study and 342 teenagers (14–19 years old) samples has been collected using purposive random sampling. Univariate and multiple regression methods have been applied for data analyzing.

Result

Result revealed that the level of premarital sex behavior of teenager in Timor Tengah Utara Regency tend to be low, about 76.9%. Then, 54.1% teenagers had a positive self-concept, 54.4% had a high self-esteem, and 50.3% had a negative attitude toward premarital sex to the premarital sex behavior. Hypothesis test indicated that self-concept, self-esteem and attitude premarital sex have no significant effect (P > 0.05, R² = 0.002) on the premarital sex behavior.

Conclusion

It can be described that North Central of Timor's teenagers have a self-concept that tends to be positive, self-esteem tends to be high, and attitudes toward premarital sexual behavior tend to be good and premarital sex behavior is low.