Towards an Understanding of Heterosexual Risk-Taking Behaviour Among Adolescents in Lusaka Zambia

This thesis investigates the underlying factors behind sexual risk-taking and non-risk-taking behavior with regard to Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) among adolescents in Lusaka, Zambia. The Qualitative Approach was used for data collection and analysis and using the theory of Social Construction, the author explains how different contexts and aspects in the Zambian Society, that is Traditional, Socio-economic, Political, etc., influence the sexuality or sexual behavior of young people in Zambia. Hermeneutics was used to interpret the meanings in the texts/transcripts acquired through data collection and from the author’s knowledge and understanding of the Zambian historical and cultural contexts within which the participants of the research were constructed. Max Weber’s Ideal Type concept was also used to explain that each young individual’s sexual behavior is uniquely constructed by societal aspects. It explains how that the discourses of these different aspects of society impact on young people individually causing them to be either Sexually Risk-taking or Non Sexually Risk-taking. Either tendency depends on whether the societal aspect that has most the dominating influence on a given individual's life is a Power factor (causing them to rationally think their way into Non Sexually Risk-taking behavior) or a Risk factor(causing them to rationally think their way into Sexually Risk-taking behavior). The author of this thesis introduces a new Model for Social Construction of Adolescent Sexuality with regard to Risk-taking. She uses it to explain how it is either power factors or risk factors that can have a greater impact on an individual's thinking, causing them to have either sexual risk-taking or non-sexual risk-taking behavior. The author concludes that the extent to which unsafe sex among the Zambian adolescents constitutes a product of interacting and/or main discourses in relation to mainly Traditional aspect risk factors, varies from person to person depending on the strength of given risk factors over any power factors that may be at play in an individual's life