Original articlesThe impact of life skills education on adolescent sexual risk behaviors in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Section snippets
Study design
As virtually all secondary schools in KZN Province had implemented some form of life skills initiative by the end of 2001, life skills education was for all intents and purposes a “full coverage” program in the province during the period of study, and thus neither randomized nor matched control group designs could be used to isolate the impact of program exposure. Instead, we took advantage of the variability in program scope and intensity across schools in the province and measured impact by
Exposure to life skills education
Exposure to life skills education was ascertained from interviews with both principals and adolescents in school. The proportion of school principals reporting that their school had some form of life skills program increased from 60% in the Wave 1 survey to 93% in Wave 2, and the proportion reporting presence of trained teachers from 76% to 94% (data not shown). However only about 15% of schools had fully adopted the KZN Province’s life skills curriculum and trained teachers in its
Discussion
The data reviewed in this paper suggest that some progress has been made in students’ exposure to life skills education in KZN. By 2001, most secondary school students in Durban Metro and Mtunzini Districts were exposed to some information that can help them reduce their risk of exposure to HIV/STIs and pregnancy, or help them cope with a family member. This is a substantial increase since 1999. The most substantial expansion in exposure to life skills education was found among students from
Conclusions
Contrary to a number of prior studies in Africa [5], [8], [10], our study findings suggest that school-based life skills education can help youth not only acquire knowledge and develop relevant skills to enable them to reduce risk of HIV transmission, but also to change selected behaviors. Both fixed-effects and instrumental variable estimates indicate a positive impact of exposure to life skills topics related to sexual-reproductive health knowledge, skills and behaviors. That the two
Acknowledgements
This research was made possible through support provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the HORIZONS Project (under the terms of Co-operative agreement No. HRN-A-00-97-00012-00), the FOCUS on Young Adults Program (Co-operative agreement No. CCP-3-73-A00-6002-00), the MEASURE-Evaluation Project (Co-operative agreement HRN-A-00-97-00018-00), and by a Rockefeller Foundation grant to the Population Council’s Policy Research Division. The opinions expressed herein
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