SOCIAL
AND REPRODUCTIVE PORTRAIT OF RURAL YOUTH
1Аbilkhas
A.А., 1Apen
N.M., 2Shamsutdinova
A.G.
1Asfendiyarov
Kazakh National Medical University,Almaty,
Kazakhstan
Introduction. The
period of formation of reproductive health and behavior is one of the most
critical periods in the biological, psychological and social development of
man. In general 27.5% of the republic population is youth. The proportion of
young people among the urban population is 27.7%, among the rural population
27.3%, recently the number of rural youth is decreasing[1]. This is due to the
outflow of young people for the purpose of further education and employment. In
the city youth with rural origin meets a lot of social, economic, health and
reproductive issues. That was the purpose of the social project
"Adaptation of rural youth in the metropolis", to reveal the
potential issues and find the way of their solution, as well as clarification
of adolescents and youth awareness of reproductive health.
Methods. We developed 2 questionnaires: for girls, consisting of 36 questions, and
for boys, consisting of 33 questions. Questionnaires developed in Russian and
Kazakh languages. Student survey was held online from February to December 2016
and everyone could keep their anonymity. Any student could join it from any
device. A computer program was developed to carry out an anonymous online
questionnaire and adapted to Android and iOS mobile applications. On every
closed-ended question a student could choose only one answer. Some questions
implied the answer "Other". In this case a student could type his own
answer. It's unable to go to the next question without answering the previous
one. Some questions provide for the expansion, with a positive response is an
in-depth question. Statistical analysis was performed by using SPSS software
(Statistical Package for Social Science). Partly filled questionnaires wasn't
taken for statistical analysis.
Confidentiality of all
respondents was provided, it was student's decision whether to continue the
survey or not. The process took less than 15 minutes.
2087 questionnaires were received
during the survey, 31 of them were culled, thus 2056 questionnaires passed
statistical processing.
Results. 798 young men
(38.8% of all respondents) took part in the survey. Two thirds or 64.9% of
respondents were under the age of 20, one third or 33.9% were from 20 to 24 and
1.2% were older than 25.
Thus 98.8% of the respondent's can
be classified as "youth".
Most of surveyed students (94.6%)
study at the four universities located in Almaty: Asfendiyarov KazNMU, Kazakh
SWTTU, Al-Farabi KazNU, Satpayev KazNTU and
little more than 5.4% are students of other universities. Before entering
the university nearly a third of respondents
(31.5%) lived in the city, and nearly two thirds (68.5%) lived in the
countryside. This allowed us to turn to the youth, who came from the
countryside to the city to study.
There is a social portrait of respondents:
almost half of respondents (46.4%) grew up in families with 3-4 children, every
third respondent (31.6%) is a student from the family with 5 children, and only
a little more than 2% (2.4%) make up a family with 1-2 children.
More than
half of respondents (53.6 %) pointed that they live in families with high
material prosperity, 37.5 % of respondents live in families with average
incomes, 5.7 % of students pointed a minimum level of material prosperity, and
3.1% of students pointed that parents are separated and have different levels
of material prosperity.
Half of respondents (50%) live in the hostel, 26.1% of
students live with relatives, 16% rent an apartment and only 8% live with their
parents.
Two thirds of respondents (65.5 %) indicated that they
don't have enough money to stay in the city, almost one in five respondents
(19.9 %) pointed that money is not always enough, 14.6 % of students pointed
that they have sufficient funds to stay in Almaty.
Despite the fact that two thirds of respondents
(65.5%) indicated the lack of funds to stay in the city, only half (52.1%) of
young people would like to combine study with work, 2.6% indicated that they
would like to combine, but only on a holidays, or it would be better to enroll
in additional courses or don't have enough time due to sports; 45.3% of
respondents answered that they don't want to combine study with work.
44.6% of young people had problems with the study
first few months, 16.8% pointed out the housing problems, 11.8% of students had
problems with poor knowledge of Russian language, 6.6% of respondents had
problems with fellow students.
Knowledge of contraception: 36.9% of respondents
answered that they know about preventing unwanted pregnancy just in general,
37.2% of respondents know almost everything, 25.9% answered that they first
heard about it. To the question "Who told about methods of prevention of
unwanted pregnancy?" every third respondent said that she had learnt about
contraception from her parents (31.0 %), friends (34.2 %) and the Internet(34.2
%).
As a result of the survey, 67.9% of young men pointed
that they have sexual relations and 33.1% aren't sexually active, while in
24.2% first sexual intercourse occurred at the age of 17± years and in 6.9% the reason was alcohol intoxication. 30.3% of
sexually active students answered that they had only one partner, 38.2% had two
partners and 31.5% had three or more partners. The most popular method of
contraception was rejected sexual intercourse - 30.6%, 28.6% use condoms.
33.4% of respondents don't prevent unwanted pregnancy and STDs.
We asked: "What would you do if your girlfriend
will get pregnant?", 53.2% of respondents don't know the answer, 21.7%
would go to the private medical centers, 1.7% would go to the student clinic.
More than half of respondents aren't ready for such responsibility.
Conclusion.
In the course of the
survey we were able to turn to the study group - young men who came from the
countryside to study in the city. During data processing we revealed that the
vast majority of students have an acute problems of everyday life, especially
in the first year of study. Unfortunately a quarter of respondents began their
sexual life before the age of 18. The usage of contraception in sexually active
students is low, one third of them use inefficient method - rejected sexual
intercourse. The disturbing fact is that more than half of respondents have two
or more sexual partners, which increases the risk of STDs. Also most of them
have no sense of responsibility to the sexual partner, many of them don't even
know what to do if their girlfriend gets pregnant. Therefore there is an acute
need for a proper and correct informing young people on reproductive and sexual
health in compliance with the principles of confidentiality. Research on the
readiness of parents, teachers and health workers to provide adolescents with
information on reproductive health and safe sex show that they aren't ready to
discuss sexuality with teenagers, often because they feel uncomfortable or
overworked, or they don't approve of the interest of young people on sexuality.
Medical students with proper training could become a
force in supporting the implementation of programs "peer to peer".
Free access to the information resources is an essential component of improving
reproductive attitudes and behavior of young men. Establishment and improvement
of the material conditions of study, work and leisure of young people is the
primary task of universities and city administrations, the solution of which is
possible with the assistance of sponsors following the example of the leading
universities of the world.
References
1. The statistical
data
of the Agency of Statistics of the Republic
of Kazakhstan,
2013.
2. Katy Mitchell. Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive
Health Toolkit for Humanitarian Settings, 2009.