How does health reproduction education based on gender equality influence knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy in adolescents?

Abstract

Adolescents experience biological and psychological maturity which is characterized by attraction toward the opposite sex and begin experimenting about sexual activity. Culture places men higher than women forming negative views about the functions, roles and positions of women. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of gender equality-based reproductive health education on improving knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy in adolescent girls and boys. The research was a quasi-experimental study using a nonequivalent pretest and posttest with a control group design. This research was conducted in two schools from August 2018 until April 2019. Schools were determined based on preliminary studies with predetermined criteria, School A as the intervention and School B for the control was done without randomization. The purposive sampling method was used to select 135 students. The data were analyzed by paired t-tests and Mann–Whitney tests. After the reproductive health education based on gender equality, the difference in scores between the pretest and posttest in the intervention group compared with the control group in adolescent boys did not show improvement with Knowledge value −0.09 vs −0.5, p = 0.878, Attitude value −2.61 vs −1.79, p = 0.713, and Self-efficacy value −3.54 vs 2.88, p = 0.067. For the adolescent girls the comparison of the scores of the intervention group actually tended to decrease at the posttest while the control group tended to increase, except in the aspect of knowledge with Knowledge value 1.06 vs −0.34, p = 0.006, attitude value −6.78 vs 0.91, p = 0.000, and self-efficacy value −5.06 vs 1.94, p = 0.015. The reproductive health education based on gender equality was only able to increase knowledge in adolescent girls only.