Ipas > Voices from the digital generation

Voices from the digital generation

June 28, 2005

The results of the TeenWeb study will be used to inform and improve policies and services for adolescents.

Photo courtesy of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Results were recently released from an innovative study in Brazil that enabled adolescents to share their knowledge, attitudes and practices related to sexual and reproductive health through a medium they dominate—the Internet.

Jovens na Rede, also known as Teen Web—a collaboration between Ipas Brazil and the University of North Carolina's Carolina Population Center— involved more than 1,400 students from six public secondary schools in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The study participants, who ranged in age from 11 to 23, completed interactive surveys on subjects such as self-esteem, health care, substance use, sexual coercion and violence, condom use, pregnancy and abortion, and were rewarded with free time to “surf the Web.”

“This was the first study of its kind,” said Carolyn Tucker Halpern, Associate Professor of Maternal Child Health and Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, “to combine traditional school-based recruitment with the power and dynamism of Web-based survey technology.”

Results of the study show that, although adolescents in Brazil are well aware of the sexual- and reproductive-health risks they face, they still lack access to the comprehensive sexuality education and health services they need to make healthy choices and ensure a safe transition into adulthood.

In particular, the study revealed a critical need for improvement in school-based health education and services related to unwanted pregnancy and abortion, sexual pressure among peers, substance use and HIV transmission. For example:

Only 28 percent of participants reported that they have taken a sexuality education class and seven percent reported that condoms are available in their school—even though the Brazilian Ministry of Health's School Health Program mandates comprehensive sexuality education and the provision of condoms and emergency contraception in schools.
Seventy percent of the study participants knew peers who had become pregnant, and almost half knew peers who had undergone an abortion, which is particularly disturbing given that complications from pregnancy and unsafe abortion rank fifth among causes of adolescent mortality in Brazil.
Thirteen percent of male participants aged 14 to 21 admitted pressuring and/or forcing their romantic partner to have sex with them, despite knowing that their partner was resistant.

According to Professor Militza B. Putziger, Director of the State University of Rio de Janeiro's Secondary School, “the themes explored in the study are extremely important, and yet youth still have difficulty getting current, accurate information about them. Studies like this one, which uses such an innovative methodology, help us to better address these issues with youth.”

Jovens na Rede is the second part of a comparative study that began with Teen Web Nairobi, which was completed in 2003. The results of this comparative study will be used to inform policies and services for adolescents as well as to guide the development of Web-based health education programs.

The educational sites used in the studies were:

Adolescent Rights
Safer Sex & Unwanted Pregnancy
Sexual Violence & Drug Prevention

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258