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CHAPTER 1

1.1INTRODUCTION

Sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, present throughout life, are often
accentuated during adolescence. Puberty provides visible, undeniable evidence
of physical maturity, obvious maleness or femaleness, and the ability to
reproduce. The normal developmental task of establishing an adult sexual
identity and the capacity for intimacy may be frustrated by the prolonged
interval between attainment of reproductive maturity and social permission to
express one's sexuality as an adult. Numerous surveys have suggested
increased sexual experimentation by increasing numbers of teenagers at
younger ages each year. Often the outcome of this behaviour can have adverse
consequences such as unplanned pregnancy and sexually acquired infections.
This preliminary serves as an overview of the most burning issues concerning
adolescent sexual behaviour, as a precursor to an all-out study of such behaviour
at NUL.

Adolescence is the period of psychosocial development beginning in the pre-teen


years, usually in conjunction with pubertal onset, and extending until the
individual assumes an adult role in society. More importantly, ‘it is a stage of
psychosocial development and the level of cognitive maturation strongly
influences each adolescent's response to any health concern, including those
related to sexuality. It is even more notable to learn that, by age 17,
approximately half of all adolescents have experienced sexual intercourse, some
before puberty, many first at age 15 to 16. Coital frequency ranges from only
once to several times a week. Sexual activity may include oral-genital or anal
sex, especially as more adolescents learn about these varieties of sexual
expression. Most adolescents have heterosexual relationships, although many
have experimented with homosexual intimacy’ (www.stdervices.on.net).

Specifically, late adolescence refers to the years past high school, from age 17 to
18 into the early twenties, and it is within this age range that most NUL
adolescents are bracketed. Research shows that ‘late adolescents are physically
adult, accepted as adults in their environments, and fertile. They are self-
supporting or pursuing educational or vocational training to become able to
support both self and a family, have increased mobility, independence and less
adult presence and protection. Their self-identity is consistent with the realities
of their size, shape, and abilities and with societal limits and expectations. Late
adolescents have a well-established sexual identity, usually heterosexual, and
the ability to have intimate relationships that satisfy the emotional and sexual
needs of both partners’ (www.stdervices.on.net). It is during this time and under
these apparently conducive conditions that ‘adolescents engage in risk-taking
behaviour involving driving, substance use, and/or sexual activity that may have
harmful consequences, which the adolescent is neither able to anticipate nor
effectively prevent. At this age, many have achieved parenthood one or more
times, some are married, with or without children, and some have been
divorced. Yet many have not yet reached the level of psychosocial maturity that
would facilitate a healthy family life for themselves, their partners and their
children’ (www.stdervices.on.net).

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1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This research project will serve as an avenue of enquiry into the fundamental
issues underlying adolescent sexuality at the National University of Lesotho
(NUL). In recent times, there has been a worldwide social revolution in the
awareness of the issues and controversies surrounding adolescent and, in more
general terms, pre-marital sexual behaviour. In general, sexual activity has
always been associated with several risks, including Sexually Transmitted
Diseases (STDs, including HIV/AIDS), unplanned, unwanted, and in the context of
this research, teenage pregnancies, with abortions being the more probable
subsequence. This is particularly true of adolescents as most are not emotionally
mature or financially independent. All of the aforementioned issues are, in one
portion or country of the world or the other, of public interest and concern.
Lesotho is no exception, in this case with a special focus on the sexual behaviour
of adolescent students of the National University of Lesotho (NUL).

As a result, the past few decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in


government policies (including Lesotho government polices) and programs
aimed at reversing the growing trend in adolescent sexual permissiveness, and
its adverse consequences upon adolescents, who are mostly naive to the ways
of the world. These policies have been implemented through programs of Sex
Education, promoting sexual abstinence or pre-marital sexual chastity, and the
harm-reducing approach of advocating safe sex (or condom usage). Adolescent
sexuality has also been given a legal aspect, by way of setting the ‘age of
consent’ law that prescribes the minimum age at which a person is considered
capable of legally giving ‘informed consent’ to any kind of sexual behaviour with
an adult (www.wikipedia.com).

The whole point is that adolescent sexuality has caused people and governments
to go to extreme lengths to curb its escalating vicious cycle of events, thereby
highlighting its importance as a public issue that requires speedy remedying.
With NUL at the hub of Lesotho’s higher education system, and therefore its
future, it is needless to say that something must be done by the university
management to alter the current course of events, with regard to increasing
unwanted pregnancies and prevalence of Venereal and other Sexually
Transmitted Diseases among their students.

1.3 OBJECTIVES

The two main objectives of this study are:

 To identify factors that influence sexual behaviour at NUL.

 To assess young people’s attitudes towards engaging in early sexual


activity.

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1.4 JUSTIFICATION

This kind of research is very necessary as its findings might have many social
policy implications for NUL and Lesotho’s government social and population
policy-making. If the radical influences that motivate (risky) adolescent sexual
behaviour are uncovered, such findings will advice the university of the
appropriate response programs to put in place in order to curtail the infection
rates of Sexually Transmitted Diseases among the students. And if, without being
overly optimistic, such programs do succeed, NUL will not only be part of the
solution in reducing STDs, but also in reducing infection rates by the more lethal
HIV. NUL students constitute a relatively minute portion of Lesotho’s population,
but they also form the crux of its future manpower requirements and success, so
by managing to reduce STD infection among its students, the university will also
be part of national triumph in reducing death rates (mortality) and improving
public health.

This particular study is also crucial as it might reveal the inherent forces causing
teenage pregnancies among NUL students and abortions (induced or
spontaneous) that are likely to follow such pregnancies. It is universally known
that pregnancies and abortions have some associated risks and complications
that may ultimately lead to, in this case, the untimely death of a student. So, by
finding the causes of teenage pregnancies among NUL students can help the
university in framing a suitable solution that will forestall such pregnancies and
their bitter consequences.

Overall, the study will highlight the important issues concerning adolescent
sexual behaviour at NUL, and so will aid the university in its future planning and
policy-making, especially concerning student affairs. NUL is charged with a
national obligation of producing a cadre of highly trained manpower and its
success in fulfilling this duty, is to some extent, limited to its success in this area
of student affairs. Its victory in reducing adolescent sexual permissiveness, STD
infection rates, teenage pregnancies and abortions, among its students, will
produce manpower that is highly trained, healthy and socially responsible. There
will also be an academic victory linked to the aforementioned in that drop-out
rates (official and unofficial withdrawals) could decline, and correspondingly
academic performance of students can be expected to improve. All of these
victories can be achieved, but first the problems and challenges posed by
adolescent sexuality at NUL should be identified, and this research will play this
vital role of illuminating such problems and challenges.

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CHAPTER 2

2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW

This study will draw much from diverse psychiatric views and findings of the
psychological and external and environmental factors on the functioning of
adolescents, to assess the nature of adolescents’ sexual behaviour, their attitude
towards sex and their feelings and impulses. Sociological and psychoanalytic
theories and related critiques will also be the key axis around which this study is
formed.

Merchant and Smith (1977:6) acknowledge that theories of adolescence vary as


to the emphasis placed on the internal biochemical determinants of behaviour or
socio-cultural factors or on the interaction of both internal and external factors. It
is therefore of paramount importance to recognise that the behaviour of
adolescents is a complex phenomenon that can be influenced by, and most
probably stems from, the interaction of a wide array of psychological, social and
environmental factors in a continuum. In accord with this line of speculation,
Semmens and Krantz (1970:23) further accentuate that, “Individuals are free to
make their own decisions as to sexual behaviour and patterns. The major
influences, as they make these decisions are probably their own desires, peer
patterns, what they conceive to be accepted practices in their community, and
ideas conveyed through the mass media.”

Although it is now generally accepted that social expectations, institutions,


cultural norms and mores and sexual orientation have a profound influence on
the psychological behaviour of adolescents, and that this behaviour is not just
the outcome of pubertal changes, Marchant and Smith (1977:6) point out that
‘nature theorists’ stress the importance of biological progression of development
and suggest that environmental factors only modify this behaviour.

The trend of heterosexual relationships is generally toward informality,


spontaneity and intimacy outside the framework of traditional dating. The views
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and attitudes of our generation in relation to dating, marriage and sex are a
stark contrast of those prevalent in the preceding generation, who wish for
young people to be safely delivered into the bonds of matrimony before initiation
of any sexual activity. This is, of course, a view that is less popular of late, and
teachers, priests and parents, who are die-hard proponents of pre-marital sexual
chastity, continue to play this role with diminishing success. Semmens and
Krantz (1970:24) also show that ‘the fear that participation in tabooed sexual
activities will result in guilt and emotional disturbances which will wreck a
subsequent marriage or blight one’s entire life is no longer much of that for most
people’. This is suggestive of the fact that universally societies are in a
transition.

Furthermore, it seems the views of Semmens and Krantz are not entirely
unfounded as they are shared by Marchant and Smith (1977:7) who explain
adolescent problems in relation to the complexities of the changing world today
where confusion is maximised for adolescents by the variety of alternatives open
and the lack of a stable frame of reference. Semmens and Krantz (1970:3) are
expressive of similar sentiments as they so eloquently assert, “For the first time
in our history, the monopolistic position of our official sex morality has been
shattered. As a society we have lost our consensus on most sex values; just as
we have been a pluralistic society as far as religious and political beliefs are
concerned, so have we become a pluralistic society as far as sexual morality is
concerned. No value system can be automatically put forward as demanding
unquestioned allegiance. Each must content in the free market place of ideas.”

This rapid alteration in the way society views itself and the way it revises its
value system is paralleled by a revolution of openness where issues related to
sexual behaviour become increasingly articulate. “In the past, most differences
of opinion about sex were covered up. Few persons – regardless of the extent to
which they breached the moral codes in private – dared to do anything but pay
lip service to these codes in public,” reaffirm Semmens and Krantz (1970:3).
“Today almost every issue has become a matter of public controversy, and
respected and respectable figures stand up in every forum to challenge almost
every one of our traditional and ‘unchangeable’ beliefs about sex and marriage.
We are in a process of transition, marked by tremendous conflict and
controversy. Most of the sex values which in the past were universal, or were
shared by all or most of the members of our society, have now become
alternatives, permitting a variety of choice.”

In their book, Semmens and Krantz (1970:10) quote Blaine as saying, concerning
social transition and adolescent sexual behaviour, “There seems to be no
thoroughly satisfactory answer to the problems presented by our instinctual sex
drive. In the end we probably must be content to watch the pendulum swing
from permissiveness to restrictiveness and back again, as each generation
becomes dissatisfied with what it has inherited from the previous one and strives
to find another answer to a problem as old as mankind itself.” This rather
unsettling citation brings forth the realization that it would be less than true, at
least under prevailing circumstances, to indicate to the young people existence
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of a completely satisfactory solution for their needs and desires. It seems at best
that only a compromise between the adolescents’ needs and desires and the
needs of the society is feasible.

Somehow there’s disparity between physical and social maturity in the natural
development of adolescents, which seems to give rise to their rather irrational
and disarrayed behaviour. Seidman (1960:42) supports this conjecture saying,
“Whether recognized as a separate status or not, the adolescent period has one
outstanding peculiarity – namely, that it is a time when the individual is attaining
physical maturity without necessarily attaining social maturity.”

On the other hand, Flemming (1952:45) highlights that recent observers have
become more conscious of the fact that human beings are neither chiefly
intellectual nor chiefly physical in their functioning, but that they are initially and
continuously social in their nature – members of groups and conditioned to such
membership. Individuals cannot, therefore be described fully either in terms of
prevalent mental state or dominant bodily impulse. They require to be
interpreted also in their relationship to other human beings and in the light of
the effect upon them of these others. For instance, delinquent children and
backward pupils were studied in relation to their home, their school, and their
street; and it began to be recognised that part of their difficulty arose from the
failure of their groups to satisfy certain of their fundamental psychological
needs.

This is one of the most prominent facets of this study upon which much effort
will be expended because NUL students, for example, come from various social
backgrounds and are tossed into a new and unfamiliar social circle in their
freshmen year. It is reasonable to assume that they would try to conform to the
standards and behavioural patterns of their peers. Moreover, Semmens and
Krantz (1977:6) indicate that sex values differ depending on social class of a
person, income influences, and religious affiliation, etc. They further enunciate
that the interests and activities of young people cannot be ignored. “Those
young people who are being pressured by their peers into sexual activity for
which they are not prepared and which is opposed to their value system need
help to become strong enough to be autonomous and resist external pressures,”
they say. For instance, studies in India have shown that sexual relationships
outside of marriage are not uncommon among Indian teenage boys and girls. It
was also found that, by far, the best predictor of whether or not a girl would be
having sex is if her friends were engaging in the same activities
(www.wikipedia.com).

Apart from that, it is becoming progressively clear that the mass media has a
huge influence on the behaviour of young people. For example, in the United
States of America the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
conducted in 2002 revealed that there is a dramatic trend toward the early
initiation of sex. It was also uncovered in the study that as much as early sexual
activity may be caused by a variety of factors, the media are believed to play a
significant role as U.S. teenagers rank the media second only to school sex

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education programs as the leading source of information about sex
(www.wikipedia.com). “The irresponsible talk about the ‘sexual revolution’,
especially in the mass media, has led many persons to overestimate the rate of
change among adolescents to permissive sexual behaviour and has produced a
stereotype of adolescent behaviour, which serves as an unfortunate pressure on
those young persons who are not ready for permissive behaviour,’’ say
Semmens and Krantz (1977:10) abrasively.

In addition, Semmens and Krantz (1977:37) further argue that ‘knowledge of the
extent to which the formerly tabooed activities are engaged in by others has
diminished feelings of guilt. Also accompanying the changes noted above have
been the proliferation of discussions and published materials concerning sexual
questions and practices. The prevalence and significance of masturbation, of the
extent of extramarital intercourse, of homosexual experiences, and other sexual
expressions are quite freely examined in the mass media. As a consequence a
person who has engaged in these experiences certainly need consider himself as
neither unique nor aberrant. The mass media also uses sex to sell everything
from beauty aids to automobiles by elevating sex as the magical key to success’.

Moving ahead, Semmens and Krantz (1977:3) cite the theories of H.T.
Christensen and other researchers as they demonstrated that the values that
people hold affect not only the sexual behaviour they engage in, but also the
consequences of this behaviour. Apparently Christensen’s cross-cultural studies,
particularly, have clearly shown that the same kind of action may have widely
differing consequences in different cultures and that the most damaging
behaviour occurs where there is the greatest discrepancy between a person’s
behaviour and his value system. Thus, in a permissive culture like Denmark was
found the least negative consequences of premarital sexual behaviour; in the
highly restrictive Mormon culture of Utah in the United States, was found the
greatest negative consequences resulting from premarital sexual behaviour.
Given the fact that Basotho’s culture, like most African cultures, is extremely
restrictive, it’s not hard to tell what the probable consequences premarital
sexual behaviour for NUL students could be.

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS

3.1 Hypotheses

 Residential background of NUL students influences their sexual behaviour

 Peer groups have an impact on adolescent sexuality of students at NUL

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 At NUL, a students’ social background affects his/her sexual behaviour

 A student’s religious affiliation is a determinant of their premarital sexual


behaviour

3.2 Research Design and Sampling

Statistical (Probability) sampling techniques will be employed to select a


representative sample of the students currently enrolled with the National
University of Lesotho (NUL). Of note is that a sampling procedure is said to be
statistical if all possible samples in the population have an equal chance or
known probabilities of being selected. According to Mendenhall (1979:405)
‘statistical sampling has two purposes – namely to avoid the possibility of bias
introduced by a non-random (non-representative) selection of sample elements,
and to provide a probabilistic basis for the selection of a sample and to heighten
the validity of inferences based on the sample’. This implies that probability
samples have theoretical justification for generalization of results obtained
thereof, to the rest of the population under study. In this case ‘the population
under study’ comprises all the students currently enrolled with NUL.

So, for this study stratified random sampling will be used to select a sample of
100 students from all NUL students. According to Yeomans (1979:123) the
impracticability or impossibility of producing a satisfactory sampling frame is a
very common reason to abandon simple random sampling, because a sample
based upon an incomplete frame can produce the most misleading results, no
matter how large a sample is selected. The sampling frame for this study is a
complete list of students currently enrolled with the university. Fortunately for
this study obtaining a sampling frame is practical as the required lists of male
and female students can be easily accessed from the office of the Dean of
Student Affairs (DSA) or alternatively the Academic Office, both of which have a
database of all students enrolled with NUL. Primarily two strata appropriate for
this study will be the male and female students currently at NUL. Each of the two
strata will be represented in the sample in proportion to its size and
homogeneity in the population. More importantly, either a table of random
numbers or a computer generation of random numbers will be used to select the
students for each of the two strata.

3.3 Data collection procedures

A structured questionnaire is going to be used in order to obtain the relevant


data from a randomly selected sample of male and female students. It will be
structured in such a way that pre-coded or multiple choice questions will be used
to capture the required information. Owing to financial and time constraints, the
interviews will be self-administered, meaning that the questionnaires will be
delivered to the selected students with a view to collection on a designated
deadline agreed upon by both the enumerators and the students in the sample.
Furthermore, due to the sensitivity of the questions, a face-to-face interview
might defeat the purpose of this study by yielding invalid and unreliable
responses, just by virtue of the interviewees not feeling the freedom to disclose
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such private and personal information to the interviewers. This deems a self-
administered questionnaire as the best approach to use for this study, especially
because the enumerators in this case will themselves be students.

3.4 Data analysis

The data from the research will be analysed by total, age and sex. That is, it
might be interesting to analyse the results of the study in terms of males and
females, jointly and separately. Tabulations and cross-tabulations of results will
be an invaluable tool upon which we will rely for grouping the results accordingly
so as to identify the age and sex specific determinants and patterns of
adolescent sexual behaviour at NUL. As such, detailed analyses of the
information contained in the tables will follow immediately below such tables.
Also various statistical techniques like contingency table analyses (analysis of
categorical data) will be used to test the hypotheses of relationships between
certain variables of interest. Measures of central tendency will also be used to
estimate, the population parameters like the average and median ages of first
sexual encounter. Rates, ratios, proportions and percentages based on the
results will also be used to provide a comprehensive analysis of the findings. On
the basis of the sample results, statistically sound generalisations of the
population parameters of the sexual behaviour of young people at NUL will be
made. We will also rely heavily on qualitative data analysis techniques to fully
analyse the data.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

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Coleman J.S. (1963).The Adolescent and Society. New York: The Free Press of
Glencoe.

Flemming C.M. (1952). Adolescence: Its Social Psychology. London, N.W. 10:
Lowe and Brydone (Printers) Ltd.

Kirkendall L.A. (1961) .Premarital Intercourse and Interpersonal Relationships.


New York: Julian Press.

Marchant H. And Smith H.M. ( 1977). Adolescent Girls at risk. Oxford: Pergamon
Press Ltd.

Mendenhall W. (1979). Introduction to Probability and Statistics: fifth edition.


North Scituate, Massachussetts: Duxbury Press.

Reubenson B. and Levit M. (1972). Youth and Social Change. Detroit, Michigan:
Wayne University Press.

Seidman J.M. (1960). The Adolescent – A Book of Readings. New York: Holt,
Reinhard and Winston, Inc.

Semmens J.P. and Krantz K.E. (1970). The Adolescent Experience: A conselling
guide to Social and Sexual Behaviour. London: Collier-Macmillan Limited.

Yeomans K.A. (1968). Statistics for the Social Scientist 2: Applied Statistics.
Bristol: Western Printing Services Ltd.

www.stdervices.on.net

www.wikipedia.com

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