What do Spanish adolescents know (or not know) about sexuality? An exploratory study

ABSTRACT

This paper explores Spanish adolescents’ knowledge of six dimensions of human sexuality: anatomy and sexual physiology; sexual health; sexual behavior and human sexual response; affection and sexuality; sexual identity; and sexuality and society. A questionnaire to evaluate their knowledge was administered to a sample of 3853 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 (M = 14.40, SD = 1.44) from 38 secondary schools throughout Castile and Leon (Spain). The results show that adolescents of both genders, mainly those enrolled in lower-secondary education levels, tend to be misinformed about sexuality. Taking into account all the analyzed dimensions, results reveal that adolescents’ knowledge of sexual identity is significantly greater than that of sexuality and society, or of anatomy and sexual physiology. In addition, women show more detailed knowledge than men, although the margin between genders is quite small. Finally, this work highlights the need for sexual education in order to promote more thorough scientific knowledge of sexuality among Spanish adolescents.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescence
• sexuality
• sexual knowledge
• sexual education
• health

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the authorities of the Autonomous Community of Castile and Leon for supporting this research (REF: SA081A11-1) and Dr. Daniel Perlman (University of Greensboro, USA) for his suggestions to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Junta de Castilla y León.