Adolescent Pregnancy: A Concept Analysis

Purpose: Adolescent pregnancy (ADOPREG), despite its serious public health & social concerns, are highly neglected worldwide especially in developing countries with restrictive abortion laws. While the concept of ADOPREG may have the same label across disciplines, locations & contexts, its representations and how it is lived vary greatly. Despite diverse representations, ADOPREG is still plagued with great debates and serious public health and socio-economic concerns including persistently high rates and associated consequences even lifetime. Thus this concept analysis of Adolescent pregnancy aimed at clarifying the meaning of the concept and develop an operational definition for it which is believed will lay a common ground for mutual understanding among stakeholders & ameliorate adolescent care. Materials and Methods: The 8-stage concept analysis theoretical model of Walker and Avant (1994) was used for this work. There was a systematic search & selection of literature in 4 phases:broad preliminary search, Mesh controlled language, revision using Boolean Logic operators OR, “AND” and “Not”. Secondly, literature search on 9 electronic databases, then manual search & finally experts’ consultation. Study selection was done by a review process guided by PRISMA. Quality appraisal was then done for each selected study separately using appropriate standard tools. Totally, 4090 record were identified & 68 included in final study. Findings: Key results revealed: ADOPREG has uses in Etymology, Literature; Health, Politics, & Sociology. As Attributes-prevalence, peripartum care, teenage friendly health centres, & role of health practitioner in reducing ADOPREG. As antecedents among others -biological factors (genes), demographic & socio-cultural factors (marital status,) & Health factors (contraception) ; non-constitutive family factors and socio-political factors.  Short-term consequences of among others include increased frequency of neonatal complications (LBW) & maternal complications (hemmorhage, abortion), & low rates of CS. Major long-term consequences are socio-economic (rejection); health (suicide) & political (taxpayers drain). Empirical referents-pregnancy rates etc. Conclusively, ADOPREG here is defined as a state in which there is the development of a human being in an individual aged 10-19 from time of conception; thus, aligning with the embryologic definition. However, the dynamic nature of this concept cannot be totally ignored. Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: More high quality concept analyses should be carried out on related issues to ADOPREG to better inform policy makers who should work collaboratively on better and operational definitions of adolescent pregnancy and its related issues.