‘It's all scientific to me’: focus group insights into why young people do not apply safe-sex knowledge

Abstract

Despite rising levels of safe-sex knowledge in Australia, sexually transmitted infection notifications continue to increase. A culture-centred approach suggests it is useful in attempting to reach a target population first to understand their perspective on the issues. Twenty focus groups were conducted with 89 young people between the ages of 14 and 16 years. Key findings suggest that scientific information does not articulate closely with everyday practice, that young people get the message that sex is bad and they should not be preparing for it and that it is not appropriate to talk about sex. Understanding how young people think about these issues is particularly important because the focus groups also found that young people disengage from sources of information that do not match their own experiences.

Keywords::

• young people
• safe-sex
• understandings
• meanings
• Australia

Notes

^1. In retrospect we would consider replacing ‘Parents’ with ‘Family’ in the instrument.

^2. Key: 13 refers to the 13th focus group conducted; F indicates female participants; the final number identifies the participant within the group. Fac., facilitator. All participants were 14–16 years old; individual ages were not recorded.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a Queensland Government National and International Research Alliances Program (NIRAP) grant for the Improved Surveillance, Treatment and Control of Chlamydial Infections.