Effects of sexual autonomy enhancement program for university students in South Korea

Aim : The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a sexual autonomy enhancement program for college students in South Korea. Subjects and methods : A non-equivalent control group pretest-posttest design was used. Data were collected in 2008 through a self-administered questionnaire from 79 students recruited from liberal arts classes in the experimental group and 77 in the control group. The experimental group received four sessions of education over 4 weeks. The contents of the program were composed by analyzing the main concepts of the health belief model to improve the will to use contraception in a situation where sexual relationships are anticipated. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and t-tests using the IBM SPSS statistics 19.0 program. Results : Scores for the experimental group after the sexual autonomy enhancement program were significantly higher than those of the control group for the following: contraception knowledge (p < 0.001), contraception attitudes (p < 0.001), and sexual autonomy regarding the use of contraception (p = 0.019). Conclusion : These results indicate that the sexual autonomy enhancement program is effective in improving contraception knowledge attitudes, and sexual autonomy among university students in South Korea. Therefore, the sexual autonomy enhancement program should be used with university students to improve their sexual health. In addition, studies on the relationships between contraception education and changes in sexual behavior are needed.ope