When it comes to sex, British Columbia’s teens can point to evidence that adults may be wrong about teens engaging in riskier behaviours at younger ages.
According to a BC Adolescent Health Survey, released today in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, province-wide trends in data from Grade 7 – 12 students in 1992, 1998, and 2003 show that youth are waiting longer to be sexually active. The data also shows that among those who have ever had sex, more youth are practicing safer sex. As well, sexual violence is less common, and teen pregnancy has declined.
According to lead author Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, Research Director at the McCreary Centre Society and Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at UBC, BC is currently the only province with a large-scale school health survey that has included questions about sexual health for more than a decade. Since 1992, the McCreary Centre Society conducted the surveys every five or six years in school districts across the province.
“This is good news about young people, and should be reassuring for parents and health care providers,” says Saewyc, who also holds a CIHR/PHAC Applied Public Health Chair in Youth Health. “Contrary to popular impressions, everyone isn’t doing it, nor are they starting younger: even among the oldest high school students, fewer than half of them had ever had sexual intercourse, and among the youngest teens, that number is less than 1 in 10. And rates have been declining since the 1990s.”
The number of teens who report ever having sexual intercourse declined by a third between 1992 and 2003, from 34 per cent down to 23 per cent of males, and from 29 per cent down to 24 per cent of females. The number of teens who first had sex before age 14 had dropped by almost half. And among those teens who had been sexually active, more of them reported sexual health practices to prevent infections and unintended pregnancy.
“The majority of sexually active adolescents, no matter what their age, reported taking steps to protect their health,” says Saewyc. “In 2003, 87 per cent used effective methods of birth control the last time they had sex, a 20 per cent increase compared to 1992. And most of those used condoms, which can also protect against sexually transmitted infections.”
The BC Adolescent Health Survey is one of the few school-based surveys that asks about a number of protective factors that show improved sexual health behaviours among adolescents. Youth who had supportive families, or were connected to their schools, for example, were less likely to have ever had sex, to report early sex (before age 14), or to have ever been pregnant or caused a pregnancy. Community involvement was also linked to better sexual health, whether through volunteering or extracurricular activities like sports or clubs.
Annie Smith, McCreary Centre Society Executive Director, says it is important to regularly ask about protective factors as well as health and sexual behaviours that might put adolescents’ health at risk. “If we didn’t ask, we wouldn’t know how well the vast majority of young people are doing,”she says, “and health authorities and schools wouldn’t have the evidence they need to guide their policies and see whether their health promotion efforts are working.”
McCreary Centre has just finished conducting the next round of the BC Adolescent Health Survey in schools with public health nurses across the province, and is in the midst of entering the responses from more than 29,000 students.
“The 2008 survey is even more comprehensive,” says Saewyc, “but of course we’ve continued to include the core questions we’ve asked since 1992. We hope to have an update ready to report in early 2009, to see if these positive trends continue.”
The analyses reported in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality were funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Public Health Agency of Canada.
A copy of the published paper can be obtained from Dr. Saewyc by e-mail at saewyc@interchange.ubc.ca. Information about McCreary Centre Society can be found at www.mcs.bc.ca.
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada’s agency for health research. CIHR’s mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to catalyze its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened Canadian health-care system. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to more than 11,000 health researchers and trainees across Canada. www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca
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