Transitions to Adulthood in the Context of AIDS 1999-2002

This interviews covered the background characteristics of the respondents, education history, work experience, a diary of their activities in the previous 24 hours, exposure to the school-based Life Skills Programme, sexual relationships, contraceptive and condom knowledge, attitudes and use, connectedness to school, family and community, alcohol and drug use, and reproductive history.

Because the South Africa life skills initiative aimed to be a full coverage program, it was not possible to use a randomized control design to measure program impact. This is because schools initiated or developed life skills education at different speeds and intensities. The study therefore measured young peoples recall of 11 topics from their school training, and assessed the differences in sexual and reproductive health knowledge and behaviors, given that these young people were differentially exposed to the topics. This is called measuring the dose-response relationship between indicators of exposure to education and sexual and reproductive health knowledge and behaviors. All the multivariate models control for unmeasured factors using a variable for survey year. A significant effect for this survey year variable was found for many of the models and may be interpreted as reflecting the combined effects of maturation of youth, exposure to other sources of information other than life skills education, and general secular trends. Exposure to life skills education was measured by changes in recall of 11 key sexual-reproductive health topics based upon student report. Outcomes included: 1) sexual abstinence to either postpone first sex (delay initiation), or for those already initiated to reduce risk through secondary abstinence; 2) reduced number of sex partners in the past 12 months; and 3) changes in condom use (i.e. condom use at first sex; condom use at last sex and consistency of condom use with all partners). Separate analyses were conducted by sex, race, and age.