Self-esteem, risky sexual behaviours and health seeking behaviours among secondary school adolescents in Kampala District

Abstract

The study examined the relationship between self-esteem, risky sexual behaviour and health seeking behaviours among secondary school students in Kampala district. The study was guided by the following objectives; to examine the relationship between self-esteem and Risky sexual behaviors among secondary school going adolescents, to explore the relationship between self-esteem and Health seeking behaviors among secondary school going adolescents, to investigate whether Risky sexual behaviors and Health seeking behaviors have a significant relationship among secondary school going adolescents. A correlational study design was employed in the study and random sampling was used to select the study sample. A total of 100 adolescent students responded to self-administered questionnaire and data were entered into and analyzed using SPSS, Microsoft excel was used to enter the data into SPSS. The hypotheses were tested using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. Results revealed that there was a negative significant relationship between self-esteem and risky sexual behaviour (r= -0.314**, p<0.01), Results further indicated that there was a negative significant relationship between risky sexual behaviour and health seeking behaviours (r=-0.242**, p<0.01), Results also revealed that there was no significant relationship between self-esteem and health seeking behaviours (r= 0.176*, p>0.05). It was concluded that adolescent students who have high self-esteem were more likely to avoid engaging in risky sexual behaviour and most likely would engage more in health seeking behaviours despite not finding a relationship between self-esteem and Health Seeking Behaviours. In order to improve Self-esteem among adolescents it was recommended that the heads of staffs, policy makers of the schools should have a curriculum to work specifically on improving self-esteem among adolescents and also have counselling session and psycho education to provide information about the dangers of participating in risky sexual behaviours.