“Woah, that’s too personal”: The Reported Behavior, Knowledge, Perspective and Sources of Reproductive Health Education of RTC Students

Abstract

This research project looks at RTC students’ reproductive health knowledge, attitudes and self-reported behavior. The project aimed to learn about the factors that influence students’ knowledge and behavior, to understand the relationships between what students know and their perspectives, and the impact of reproductive health education on their sexual behavior. Data was collected in the spring of 2018 over a period of a month, using a mixed-method approach (both interviews and a survey). A total of 20 students were interviewed, while 52 completed the survey. The findings showed that there was a large gap between the students’ knowledge and their actual behavior in terms of safe sex practices, that sexually-active students are more concerned about the risk of pregnancy than they are about STIs and that sexually-active male students have a murky understanding of consent, while female students reported
that sexual relationships often begin under pressure. The project was conceptualized and conducted by Tandin Pelden, as her undergraduate research project, while Dolma Choden Roder was her supervisor for this project.