Correlates of Pregnancy and Sexual Experience in Australian Adolescents

Abstract

In 1983 a longitudinal study was commenced in the Hunter Region of New South Wales to investigate the development of adolescent psychosocial morbidity. This paper reports analyses based on data obtained during the screening phase of that project, in which 2157 adolescents completed a Social and Emotional Development questionnaire. Those surveyed comprised approximately 25% of the 14-16 year olds in the region.Adolescents were allocated to 1 of 3 groups on the basis of their sexual experience: no sexual experience (26%), minor sexual experience (such as petting, 47%), and major sexual experience (sexual intercourse on at least one occasion, 27%). Overall, 31% of the males and 24% of the females were in the major sexual experience group; 1 in 15 of the females in this group (n = 17) reported that she had been pregnant. Just over half (52%) of the girls in the major sexual experience group had used contraceptives, compared with 42% of the boys.A series of hierarchical discriminant analyses were undertaken to try to identify variables that distinguished between the 3 sexual experience groups. A similar analysis was undertaken to compare those girls within the major sexual experience group who had been pregnant with those who had not. Although the 3 sexual experience groups differed in a number of important respects (e.g., beliefs about access to contraceptives, extraversion, age, perceptions of parental caring, and church attendance), there were few features that distinguished between the sexually active girls who had been pregnant and those who had not, prompting the conclusion that ‘chance’ may well be one of the major determinants of adolescent pregnancy (together with related but unexamined factors such as frequency of intercourse).