Adolescents' Knowledge of Teenage Pregnancy in Ilejemeje Local Government Area, Ekiti State

Adolescent is a period between 13 and 19 years with peculiar social, physical, psychology and health reproductive characteristics. Globally, approximately 11% of all births are traced to women younger than 20 years. In developing country, almost 21million of teenagers get pregnant yearly and 12million give birth out of which 777,000 are within the age of 15years below. The aim of this study is to investigate adolescents’ knowledge of teenage pregnancy in Ilejemeje Local Government Area of Ekiti State. A non-experimental, cross sectional descriptive research design was used for this study. The population comprised of all female teenagers in both JSS and SSS classes in six secondary schools in the LGA. Multistage sampling procedure which consists of simple random sampling, purposive sampling and stratified sampling techniques was used to select 331 students that formed the sample. A closed structured questionnaire was adapted tagged Questionnaire on Knowledge of Teenage Pregnancy QKTP. Test-retest was used to ascertain the stability using Pearson Product Moment Correlation. The findings showed that the adolescents were knowledgeable about teenage pregnancy with 273 (89.5%) students scored above 50. It was also revealed that lack of knowledge about sex, poverty, media infiltration by sexual messages, family breakdown and sexual harassment were highly responsible for teenage pregnancy. It was recommended among others that Nurses and Midwives should embark on school health talk that will stressed abstinence from premarital sex and where this is not possible, use of contraceptives should be encouraged among the adolescent after counselling. Keywords: Knowledge, Adolescent, Teenage Pregnancy, Perceived Causes