Perceived knowledge gained from school-based sexuality education – results from a national population-based survey among young people in Sweden

Anna ChuChu Schindele; Henrik Källberg; Kristina Areskoug Josefsson; Malin Lindroth

doi:10.1071/SH23093

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Perceived knowledge gained from school-based sexuality education – results from a national population-based survey among young people in Sweden

Anna ChuChu Schindele

^A ^B ^* , Henrik Källberg ^C , Kristina Areskoug Josefsson ^D ^E and Malin Lindroth ^A ^E

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Faculty of Health and Society, Institution for Social Work, Centre for Sexology and Sexuality Studies, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden.

^B Unit for Sexual Health and HIV Prevention, Department of Communicable Disease Control and Health Protection, The Public Health Agency of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden.

^C Unit for Analysis, Department of Public Health Analysis and Data Management, The Public Health Agency of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden.

^D Department of Health Sciences, University West, Trollhättan, Sweden.

^E Department of Behavioural Science, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway.

^* Correspondence to: anna-chuchu.schindele@mau.se

Handling Editor: Anthony Smith

Sexual Health - https://doi.org/10.1071/SH23093
Submitted: 8 May 2023 Accepted: 13 October 2023 Published online: 6 November 2023

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Background

School-based sexuality education is a core component of securing young people’s right to attain health equity regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights. This paper aims to explore how perceived knowledge (sufficient or insufficient) of taking care of one’s sexual health is associated with knowledge gained from school-based sexuality education and social determinants.

Methods

The data material is drawn from a population-based survey conducted in Sweden in 2015. The survey had 7755 respondents and a response rate of 26%. To explore the aim descriptive statistics and logistic regression models were used.

Results

Our results show that perceived insufficient knowledge from school-based sexuality education was associated with higher odds of reporting not being able to take care of one’s sexual health. The highest significant excess risk for insufficient knowledge was found among young people from sexual minorities.

Conclusions

Young people in Sweden do not have equal abilities to receive knowledge needed to take care of their sexual health and thus attain sexual health literacy. There is an unequal distribution of perceived knowledge, and LGBTQI+ youth particularly face barriers in using school-based sexuality education as a resource for sexual health literacy.

Keywords: Agenda 2030, health equity, health promotion, intersections, public health, school-based sexuality education, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), sexual health literacy.

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