Abstract:

Contraceptive use by adolescents has become a critical issue of concern to parents, educators and medical practitioners in recent years because of trends towards more widespread and early sexual activity of adolescents. This leads to devastating consequences of unprotected sexual activity at an early age such as unplanned pregnancy, unsafe abortion and sexually transmitted infection.

The study assessed the knowledge, attitudes, practices and beliefs about contraceptives use among secondary schools adolescents in benin city, edo state, Nigeria.. Descriptive cross sectional design using both quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted for the study. Four hundred students from seven public secondary schools categorised into urban, peri-urban and rural were randomly selected and interviewed.

The result showed that contraceptives awareness level among the students was high but the use among the sexually active students was very low due to ignorance. The television was the main source of knowledge on contraceptive to adolescents. Only 23.3% of the boys and 11% of the girls of the sexually active students who claimed to use contraceptives used them consistently. The male condom was the commonest used method by both sexes. The main reasons given for non-use of contraceptives were ignorance and feeling shy buying contraceptives. There is the need for adolescents to be educated more on their sexuality to increase their awareness of the risks of pregnancy and STIs such as HIV.

Keywords: Contraceptive, Adolescents, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice.

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