Knowledge and practice preventing sexually transmitted infections : exploring the impact of sexual health education in schools in Malta

Abstract

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are one of the main causes of both physical and psychological acute diseases which might even lead to death worldwide. Around 1 million individuals around the world are acquiring such infections on a daily basis. STIs are transmitted mainly via sexual fluids and blood. Sexual health education is said to help decrease the rate of STIs. Thus, since Malta has one of the highest rates of STIs in Europe, it was deemed necessary to obtain a better understanding of the Maltese population’s insight regarding safe sexual practice, sexual health and their knowledge of sexual health. Research Method: The chosen research method for this proposed study is mixed methods; collecting both qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative part consisted of expert interviews with PSCD teachers representing a randomly chosen church and public secondary school. Due to unforeseen difficulties, no PSCD teacher could represent a private secondary school. The online questionnaire was delivered in both Maltese and English language. A non-random convenience sample of individuals resident in Malta was created by posting it on four different Facebook groups using secondary education in Malta as the key inclusion criteria. This study was carried out anonymously and each individual was voluntarily taking part in this study. The data extracted from the questionnaires was gathered on SPSS. Results: The qualitative part showed the PSCD teachers’ concern regarding not enough time allocated for sexual health education in both the public and the church school. Both PSCD teachers believe that the high rates of STIs in Malta are caused due to behavioural issues and are not knowledge-based. The questionnaire which represents the quantitative part of this study (n=355) showed that the overall knowledge mean score obtained by the participants was 5.64 out of 7. The difference in mean score was statistically significant in gender, age and the type of secondary school attended. Females were more knowledgeable about STIs than males. It was noted that participants who were 55+ years had a lower knowledge mean score than the rest of the age groups. The mean score obtained by participants who attended an independent school was significantly higher than for the rest of the schools. The total number of sexual partners varied significantly by gender and marital status. Males were more likely to have had more sexual partners in their lifetime as compared to females. Married participants were more likely to have sexual intercourse with only one partner as compared to the other marital statuses. Differences in age groups and sexual orientation groups were not statistically significant with regard to the total number of sexual partners. The frequency of condom use was affected by marital status, age and gender. Conclusion: The high level of knowledge on sexual health that is evident in the data is parallel to what was anticipated by both PSCD teachers who were interviewed as they believe that the increasingly high rates of STIs in Malta are due to behavioural issues rather than a lack of knowledge. Further research is needed to identify the main behavioural issues affecting the high rates of STIs in Malta and how one can tackle them.