Knowledge, attitudes and practices of university students about sexual and reproductive health in the year 2021-2022

Abstract

Introduction: Sexual and reproductive health education is the responsibility of society, which should begin in our homes from a young age and runs throughout our lives through the bonds we develop with people. Currently, there are significant changes in behavior, attitudes and values regarding sexuality among young people of different sexes. The objective of this work is to identify the knowledge, attitudes and practices of university students about sexual and reproductive health in the year 2021.
Materials and Methods: Non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive design. The study was carried out at the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad del Pacifico in the city of Asuncion. Ninety-eight students from different careers participated. A validated survey of the project was used. Descriptive indicators of the variables were used for the analysis.
Results: 98 surveys were analyzed, of which 62 (63.27%) were women, 87 (88.78%) were between 18 and 23 years of age, 60 (61.2%) did not have a stable partner, 87 (88.78%) were heterosexual. Regarding the knowledge about diseases, the average score was 9.5 (68.07%) with respect to the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, we found that 10.2% of respondents marked between a lot and quite a lot and 37.76% have ever been afraid of contracting an sexually transmitted disease.
Conclusion: In this study we have observed that the knowledge, attitudes, sexual and reproductive practices of young university students reflect that there is still a small population of young people who still have erroneous knowledge about sexual health and everything related to this topic or who are directly unaware of basic issues despite the level of education they are at.