Abstract:

Background: The adolescents’ sex education is one of the major concerns of Portuguese educational and health policies and is considered a contribution to the global development and reproductive and sexual health.

Objectives: To evaluate the acquisition of attitudes and knowledge necessary to sex and reproductive education, after a formative intervention.

Methods: Action research accomplished through a program of training intervention on affectivity and sexuality, with a sample of 90 adolescents attending the 9th grade, 48 of the control group and 42 of the experimental group, with an average age of 14,9 years. The data gathering instrument includes a questionnaire to characterize the sample and an ordinal Likert Scale constructed for this effect about the adolescents' attitudes towards sexuality and knowledge about reproduction, sexually transmitted infections and family planning.

Results: There were no significant statistical differences between the experimental group and the control group before the formative activity, although the differences were evident afterwards, concerning sexual affectivity (t= - 5.066; p= 0.000), knowledge about family planning (t= - 11.754; p= 0.000), sexually transmitted infections (t= - 9.820; p= 0.000) and knowledge about reproduction (t= - -8.776; p= 0.000).
When analysing the groups separately, we found a statistical significance in the experimental group before and after the formative activity, related to affectivity and sexuality (t= - 7.795; p= 0.000), knowledge about family planning (t= - 13.468; p= 0.000), sexually transmitted infections (t= - 10.739; p= 0.000) and knowledge about reproduction (t= -8.903; p= 0.000); in the control group we only found differences in the knowledge about sexually transmitted infections (t= - 2.439; p= 0.019).

Conclusion:
The results allow us to conclude that the formative activity in the control group contributed to complement and acquire more knowledge about sex education; there was a positive association and highly significant before and after the formation, which is not comproved by the control group.

Keywords:

Adolescents, Sex Education, School.