Age at sexual debut and the effect of the conceptual borders created by rural, suburban, and urban living among adolescent females

Back ground: Adolescent females may experience significantly different ages at sexual debut due to the expected differences created by the conceptual borders of location of residence. Socioeconomic variations, values, norms, and expectations of behavior created by those invisible divides, combined with other factors affect when first intercourse occurs.

Purpose: This study analyzed differences in the risk and protective factors, and health risk behaviors associated with age at sexual debut among rural, suburban, and urban adolescent women.

Methods: A secondary analysis of the 2003 YRBS data tested the model for factors affecting age at sexual debut among urban, suburban, and rural adolescent women. Multifactor ANOVAs analyzed the relationships between sexual debut, risk and protective factors, and health risk behaviors while controlling for location of residence.

Results: When examined in combination with protective factors, risk factors, and health risk behaviors, location of residence was a factor affecting age at sexual debut. The overall trends for location of residence included a younger age at sexual debut among urban females, followed by suburban females, then rural females.

Conclusion: Adolescents deserve appropriate interventions aimed at changing behaviors, regardless of where they live in order to meet Healthy People 2010 goals. Interventions to modify factors affecting age at sexual debut hold the potential to increase the percent of adolescents who abstain from intercourse and to increase condom use among those adolescents who are sexually active, but must be tailored to be appropriate to particular groups as created by the conceptual borders of where they live.