INTRODUCTION Religion, by definition, is a conservative force based upon a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe. These beliefs are mainly based on traditions involving scriptures, prophecy and revelations that have been incorporated into the theories behind a particular religion. The difficulty with religion and traditional beliefs is that they are slow to cha...

The transition of children to adulthood through adolescence tends be more daring take risks so that it has an impact on reproductive health problems such as promiscuity leading premarital sex, abortion, and the emergence HIV-AIDS. So far, government carried out prevention Youth Care Health Service (PKPR) been implemented throughout Indonesia, including city Padang. However, scope services provi...

BACKGROUND Delaying sexual initiation has been promoted as one of the methods of decreasing risks of HIV among young people. In traditional countries, such as Ethiopia, retaining virginity until marriage is the norm. However, no one has examined the impact of this traditional norm on sexual behaviour and risk of HIV in marriage. This study examined the effect of virginity norm on having sex bef...

OBJECTIVES To describe recent trends in age at first sex in African countries, identifying and making due allowances for a variety of common reporting errors. METHODS Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from six African countries conducting three or more surveys since 1985 were analysed using survival analysis techniques, combining information on virginity status and retrospective repor...

OBJECTIVES This study explored sexual knowledge, attitudes and practices of female only-child undergraduates and made a comparison with students with siblings. METHODS Anonymously completed questionnaires were received from 4,769 female undergraduates, recruited using randomized cluster sampling by type of university and students' major and grade. Multivariate logistic regression was used to ...

Using data from 210 couples who provided data across the first 5 years of marriage, we examined how premarital communication quality was related to divorce and later distress. The results showed that premarital observed negative and positive communication nearly reached significance as predictors of divorce, while self-reported negative communication was significantly associated with divorce. I...