Association between social-cognitive factors and intention towards sexual activity among school-going late adolescents in Kuantan, Malaysia

Abstract

This was a cross-sectional study to identify the association between sociocognitive factors (permissive attitude, social-norms, and self-efficacy) and intention towards sexual activity among 466 Malaysian school-going late adolescents (aged 18-19 years) in Kuantan, Malaysia. Majority were females (64.4%), Malays (67.4%) and Muslims (68.2%). Simple logistic regression from data collected by self-administered validated Youth Sexual-Intention Questionnaire (YSI-Q) showed significantly increase risk of having sexual intention for each unit increase in permissive attitude, social-norms and self-efficacy scores with the odds ratio (OR) of 1.424, 1.303 and 1.215, respectively. On the other hand, multivariate logistic regression resulted in male, non-Malay, ever-smoker students and permissive attitude showing significantly higher risk towards having sexual intention with the OR of 0.163 (male was the reference group), 5.110, 3.288 and 1.236, respectively. In order to reduce risky sexual behaviour among adolescents, school-based health education is essential.

The Relationship Between Self-efficacy and Intention to Engage in Premarital Sex Among Adolescent Students in Public Secondary Schools in Tanzania

“…Therefore, having a lower intention towards pre-marital sexual behaviour suggested that most adolescent students in public secondary schools had a lower inclination towards engagement in pre-marital sex. The findings agree with those of Abdullah et al (2020b) who focused on the link between sociocognitive factors and intention towards sexual actions among late adolescents; with the results indicating that adolescent students had low intention to engage in pre-marital sex. Again, Abdullah et al (2020a) conducted a study to predict sexual intention to engage in pre-marital sex among late adolescent students in…”

“…Generally, the study findings showed there was lack of association between self-efficacy and intention to engage in pre-marital sex among adolescent students. As such, these findings are consistent with those in a study conducted by Abdullah et al (2020b), which focused on socio-cognitive factors and intention to engage in pre-marital sex. The findings reported that there was a weak statistically significant relationship between self-efficacy and intention to engage in sexual activity.…”

Gender Differences in Levels of Toxic Positivity in Adolescents: A Quantitative Study

“…Therefore, when viewed through this lens, the objective of toxic positivity is ultimately to lead to happiness. The distinction lies in the fact that toxic positivity is geared towards achieving immediate gratification by disregarding negative emotions (Quintero & Long, 2019;Abdullah et al, 2020;Pronk et al, 2020). Furthermore, the motivation behind toxic positivity, namely a desire to provide help, stands in stark contrast to the context of verbal violence, which constitutes an act of aggression.…”