Teenage girls in foster care are estimated to have pregnancy rates that are roughly 20% higher than the national average. However, most research on the sexual health of foster youth has used small, non-representative samples of foster youth. This study examined both sexual activity and pregnancy among maltreated youth referred to child welfare systems using data from the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-being, the first nationally representative sample of youth who come into contact with the child welfare system. Three separate analyses were conducted to answer the overall question, ‘how does foster care impact sexual activity and pregnancy for maltreated youth?’ Descriptive statistics, multinomial regression and hierarchal generalized linear modeling were used to address separate research aims to understand foster care’s impact on sexual activity and pregnancy. Results suggest that there are few differences between maltreated youth who enter foster care and those who do not enter foster care. Additionally, foster care does not appear to impact rates of sexual activity or pregnancy for maltreated youth. Rather, problems in the family of origin and maltreatment the child had experienced appear to influence both sexual activity and pregnancy. / text

This qualitative inquiry uses a life history prospective approach to investigate the social context in which adolescent girls’ sexual feelings emerge and in which girls’ sexual experiences occur. Nine adolescent girls were interviewed at two points in time during their adolescence and themes from their narratives were analyzed with respect to their experiences with sexuality. It appears that peers, family members, and sexual/dating partners have a major effect on both, girls’ sexual experiences and their connection with their sexual feelings. Prospective analysis revealed that over time, the social contexts of adolescent girls became more complex and girls became exposed to increasingly contradictory messages about what they should do and feel and behave. Girls appeared to have internalized the social messages around sexuality, which was evident through how girls talked about sexuality and through girls’ direct reports that their decisions were affected by the social and familial implications of their decisions.

This qualitative inquiry uses a life history prospective approach to investigate the social context in which adolescent girls’ sexual feelings emerge and in which girls’ sexual experiences occur. Nine adolescent girls were interviewed at two points in time during their adolescence and themes from their narratives were analyzed with respect to their experiences with sexuality. It appears that peers, family members, and sexual/dating partners have a major effect on both, girls’ sexual experiences and their connection with their sexual feelings. Prospective analysis revealed that over time, the social contexts of adolescent girls became more complex and girls became exposed to increasingly contradictory messages about what they should do and feel and behave. Girls appeared to have internalized the social messages around sexuality, which was evident through how girls talked about sexuality and through girls’ direct reports that their decisions were affected by the social and familial implications of their decisions.

With the growth of Pentecostalism over the last few decades, conservative values and punitive sanctions related to the sexual behavior of adolescents and unmarried youth began to play an important and systematic role in Pentecostal and renewed Protestant churches as well as in charismatic Catholic communities. Simultaneously, religion has become an important and highly present factor in the lives of many adolescents and youth in Brazil. In terms of attempting to attract this age group, these churches and communities, stand out, as they have used their resources to create a space for this segment of the population to participate in a religious environment. Youth groups, dating groups, trade courses, lectures, aid work in poor communities, confirmation and other activities such as retreats and religious trips, have been frequently observed in these churches and charismatic communities. In this dissertation, I examine the associations between religious involvement and sexual initiation in Brazil. More specifically, I investigate (1) whether religious denomination and religiosity are associated with age at premarital first sexual intercourse, (2) whether these associations have changed over the last three decades, (3) how different churches and religious leaders address sexual behavior issues, and (4) the mechanisms through which religion can influence adolescents’ sexual behavior in Brazil. These research questions are assessed by employing multiple data sources and methodologies including three Demographic and Health Surveys carried out in Brazil in 1986, 1996, and 2006 and event history analysis, as well as in-depth interview data and participant observation among different religious groups and affiliations by attending several Catholic masses, Protestant religious services, youth groups, Sunday schools, and religious talks/lectures. Quantitative and qualitative findings of this dissertation show that adolescents and youth from Pentecostal churches and communities seem more likely to delay or abstain from premarital sexual initiation when compared to traditional Catholics. I conclude by suggesting that the dissemination of conservative norms and sanctions as well as the availability of greater space for youth to maintain close relationships with these churches have helped create mechanisms through which religion can directly and indirectly influence the lives and sexual behavior of young people in Brazil. / text

Why are so many girls becoming pregnant in Brownsville, Texas? I encountered this question as a result of my field work. Teachers, school administrators, community officials, parents, and even students pose this question as part of a local concern over the high birth rate among Brownsville youth. As a response to this concern, I engage with this overarching research question by exploring the sex lives and romantic experiences of young mothering teens in Brownsville, through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. However, as part of a larger mission of problematizing common misconceptions and misunderstanding regarding Mexican-origin youth and their sex lives, this thesis offers a Chicana feminist/borderlands analysis of what the young women shared concerning their sexual experiences. Through their stories, I situate teen pregnancy as a symptom of a complex web of discourses, practices, social institutions, and ideologies regarding sex, thereby elucidating the socio-cultural factors that make young Mexicanas vulnerable to unprotected sex, and consequently unintended pregnancy in Brownsville, Texas. Throughout this thesis I focus on three social and personal venues that stood out as the most influential sources from which my informants learned and talked about sex: peers, mothers, and boyfriends. Contrary to the culture of silence presumed by the literature, the mothers and peers of the young respondents are quite vocal about sex; in fact, there is strong peer pressure for young women to have sex. However, they are expected to so within the context of a committed, heterosexual relationship in which young women give into male desire. This set of social expectations compels young women to have unprotected sex, but also to engage in unwanted sex. In the final chapter, I suggest how sex education can be improved and tailored to the particular needs of Brownsville youth—that is both women and men. / text

Les transformations institutionnelles qu’a connu la Guadeloupe ont marqué les pratiques sexuelles de la population. Cependant, comme partout en France on retrouve l’éducation à la sexualité à l’école. Afin de comprendre comment se fait cette intervention de la sphère publique par le contexte scolaire auprès des élèves d’origines sociales diversifiée. Nous prenons comme référence les travaux de Bru (2002), Chevallard (1985, 2009), Sauvage et Turpin (2012) et Poggi (2014) pour le processus de contextualisation et ceux de Lahire (2012) et de Bozon (2013) pour comprendre la production, rencontre et modification des dispositions incorporées sexuelles. On pose que l’apport des savoirs va produire et agir sur les dispositions incorporées sexuelles des élèves par l’action de l’enseignant et crée un processus de contextualisation. Nous formulons deux hypothèses : la situation didactique en éducation à la sexualité est à la fois contextualisée et contextualisante.Les études menées sur l’analyse du curriculum formel, sur l’analyse des pratiques déclarées des enseignants et sur l’analyse des pratiques déclarées des élèves en rapport avec le milieu didactique en éducation à la sexualité. Permettent de conclure que la dimension contextualisée est révélée par les dispositions incorporées des acteurs et le poids du contexte institutionnel. Cette dimension contextualisée induit une dimension contextualisante, par une place insuffisante accordée au contexte social de l’élève, le savoir reste homogène dans un milieu diversifié. Cette rencontre entre homogénéité et diversité crée des inégalités dans l’acquisition des savoirs et dans les choix de conduites sexuelles. / The institutional transformations experienced by Guadeloupe marked the sexual practices of the population. However, as everywhere in France we find sexuality education at school. To understand how this intervention of the public sphere is done by the school context with students of diverse social origins. We take as reference the works of Bru (2002), Chevallard (1985, 2009), Sauvage and Turpin (2012) and Poggi (2014) for the contextualization process and those of Lahire (2012) and Bozon (2013) to understand the production, encounter and modification of the incorporated sexual dispositions. It is posited that the contribution of the knowledge will produce and act on the sexual incorporated dispositions of the pupils by the action of the teacher and creates a process of contextualization. We formulate two hypotheses: the didactical situation in sexuality education is both contextualized and contextualizing.Studies on formal curriculum analysis, analysis of teachers 'declared practices and analysis of students' reported practices related to the didactical environment in sexuality education. Let us conclude that the contextualized dimension is revealed by the incorporated provisions of the actors and the weight of the institutional context. This contextualized dimension induces a contextualizing dimension, by an insufficient place given to the social context of the student, knowledge remains homogeneous in a diversified environment. This encounter between homogeneity and diversity creates inequalities in the acquisition of knowledge and in the choice of sexual behavior.

Sexuality is an integral part of health and well-being. Despite a 30-year history of adolescent sexuality research, there has been little that has focused on more than risky sexual behaviour. For example, there has been little research on conceptions of sexuality and pathways to sexual health. In part, this is because sexual health has been often defined as the lack of risky behaviour and health problems. In the studies reported here, components of female sexual health were identified and tested, including behaviours and cognitions, among groups of girls in their late teens and early 20s. After a review of the literature, four sets of factors appeared central to identifying female sexual health. These factors included sexual subjectivity, sexual agency, psychosocial well-being and sexual exploration. The first factor, sexual subjectivity, had previously been described as important to female sexual well-being, but had been developed within feminist theories and studied with qualitative methodologies. After a thorough review of the literature, no psychometrically sound measure of sexual subjectivity was found. Therefore, an instrument to assess sexual subjectivity was constructed and validated through a series of studies. Partially as expected, five factors were found - sexual body-esteem, entitlement to sexual pleasure from oneself, entitlement to sexual pleasure from a partner, sexual self-efficacy in achieving sexual pleasure, and sexual self-reflection. In additional cross-sectional and longitudinal (6-month, 2 waves) studies, associations between sexual subjectivity, sexual agency, psychosocial well-being, and sexual experience were examined. The results showed that there were concurrent associations between sexual subjectivity and measures of sexual agency and some measures of psychosocial wellbeing. Results also showed that females with more sexual experience (i.e., experience with sexual intercourse, self-masturbation, noncoital orgasmic responsiveness, and same-sex sexual experience) were relatively higher in sexual subjectivity and sexual agency. However, well-being was similar in sexual experience groups when they were compared. In longitudinal analyses, changes in sexual subjectivity, sexual agency and psychosocial well-being were examined for the whole sample and among subgroups defined by levels of sexual experience. Comparisons were also made between those girls who commenced sexual intercourse during the course of the study, those who remained virgins, and those who were nonvirgins at the first assessment. Main effects generally validated cross-sectional findings. Girls who commenced first sexual intercourse relatively earlier increased in self-esteem over time, compared to their virgin counterparts. Girls who reported a history of self-masturbation and noncoital orgasmic responsiveness, and girls who reported no history with either behaviour, increased in sexual body-esteem and self-esteem over time, but the former group of girls were relatively higher in sexual body-esteem and self-esteem than the latter group of girls. Girls who reported a history of one, but not the other of self-masturbation and noncoital orgasm did not change over time. Results also indicated that girls' transition to first sexual intercourse had little association with sexual subjectivity, but some findings were suggestive of a need for further research. Future research, and study strengths and limitations are discussed. There is a need to examine sexual subjectivity as both an antecedent and an outcome using longer time lags with several waves of assessment so that the linkages between sexual subjectivity and other factors can be determined. The implications of sexual subjectivity and sexual exploration for sexuality education are also discussed.

<p>&nbsp / </p> <p align="left">This study aimed to establish the effect of the training that was provided by <i><font face="Times New Roman">PASHA </font></i><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">on the knowledge and attitudes of school counsellors regarding </font>HIV/AIDS. The research was conducted as a quantitative, observational KA(knowledge, attitude) study in 57 schools (37 or 32 % of the intervention schools,20 non-intervention schools) in Tanga region, using questionnaires to compare the knowledge and attitudes of trained counsellors with those of untrained counsellors towards HIV/AIDS, sexuality and reproductive rights of their students. Questionnaires were pre-tested and then administered face-to-face over a four week period in 2007. Eighty five counsellors were interviewed, 56 of these had received in-service training as counsellors, while 29 had not received any training by </font></font><i><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">PASHA</font></font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3">.</font></font></i></p>

There is no doubt that relevant and up-to-date elementary school curriculum is vital for the adequate education and socialization of youth, however, when a society is characterized by ideological pluralism and multiple visions of morality the debates over curriculum can be acrimonious and tempestuous. These debates are particularly heated when sex education is concerned since adults in Western society have a longstanding cultural discomfort with child and adolescent sexual knowledge and, more specifically, there is a strong belief that sexual knowledge compromises the “natural” innocence and ignorance of young people. This research focuses on a debate that occurred in Ontario in April and May of 2010 after the Government attempted to revise Health and Physical Education curriculum for grades 1-8, the subject that contains sex education. Following considerable backlash, the Ontario Premier shelved the proposed revisions a mere 54 hours after the curriculum was publicized. What led to this curriculum being received so poorly by the public and what were the contributing factors that led to this abrupt reconsideration? My research examines the debate that the new sex education curriculum produced and draws attention to the ways in which the deep seated anxieties of adults regarding adolescent and child sexual knowledge were able to overpower the voices of researchers and educational experts who were promoting the revisions. Some adults were concerned about the way that the curriculum presented a particularly liberal vision of sexual morality and argued that the new content would corrupt, mislead, and confuse youth. Though there were some individuals and groups who supported the revisions, arguing that they were relevant, necessary and overdue, their voices were not as organized or influential as the religious and social conservatives who dominated the debate. I argue that the proposed revisions to the Ontario sex education curriculum failed to gain public support because of the Government’s inability to adequately prepare for and mediate the Province’s competing liberal and conservative sexual ideologies. In my defense of the abandoned revisions, I explore how they failed to gain support not only because of the vociferous opposition of conservative religious groups who did not want to see a more liberal vision of sexual morality in the curriculum, but also due to a longstanding cultural discomfort with child and adolescent sexual knowledge and an unwillingness to fully affirm non-heterosexual identities and practices within the education system. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2011-06-07 14:50:24.526

<p>&nbsp / </p> <p align="left">This study aimed to establish the effect of the training that was provided by <i><font face="Times New Roman">PASHA </font></i><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">on the knowledge and attitudes of school counsellors regarding </font>HIV/AIDS. The research was conducted as a quantitative, observational KA(knowledge, attitude) study in 57 schools (37 or 32 % of the intervention schools,20 non-intervention schools) in Tanga region, using questionnaires to compare the knowledge and attitudes of trained counsellors with those of untrained counsellors towards HIV/AIDS, sexuality and reproductive rights of their students. Questionnaires were pre-tested and then administered face-to-face over a four week period in 2007. Eighty five counsellors were interviewed, 56 of these had received in-service training as counsellors, while 29 had not received any training by </font></font><i><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">PASHA</font></font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="3">.</font></font></i></p>