1Professor, Department of Planning and Evaluation, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi
2Assistant Director, Competition Commission of India, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur
3Ex-Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur
4Assistant Research Officer, Department of Planning and Evaluation, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi
5Assistant Professor, Department of Planning and Evaluation, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi
Online published on 1 October, 2015.
Although premarital sex relationships are widely discouraged in India, some youth do form such relationships due to change in social mores, media influence and other social and cultural factors.
To understand the nature and extent of youth sexual behaviour and examine the relationship between individual characteristics, attitude towards reproductive health issues and sexual behaviour.
In the study quantitative data have been collected among 2000 youths from Delhi and 1500 youth from Lucknow belonging to age group 15–24 years. Logistic regression analysis is applied to find out relationship between pre-marital sex and set of 18 independent variables relating to attitude, behavior and exposure to media etc.
It was found that exposure to alcohol, drugs, pornographic films and family status of the students, attitude towards females were positively related with premarital sex relationships.
Findings underscore the need for educating youths on social and attitudinal sexual health issues to target not only young people but also their peers.
Family background, smoking behaviour, exposure to pornographic literature, premarital sex, peer group influence
