Reproductive health decision-making among adolescents in public secondary schools in Zaria, North-Western, Nigeria

Introduction: Risky sexual behavior among adolescents is a major contributory factor to adolescent morbidity. This is mainly because during adolescence, cognitive, and psychological maturity coupled with increased need for autonomy translates into a greater desire for independent decision-making. The study assessed reproductive health decision-making and its sociodemographic determinants among adolescent senior secondary school students. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study involving 384 adolescent senior secondary school students selected through multi-stage sampling. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 20 and results are presented in tables and charts. Results: Mean age of the respondents was 17.5 ± 1.3 years, and 170 (44.6%) were <18 years old. Reproductive health decision-making was good in 116 (30.1%). If they were sexually abused, 187 (48.4%) said that they would report first to their parents. Reproductive health decision-making showed statistically significant association with gender (P = 0.04), and class of the study (P < 0.0001), but not with age (P = 0.24), ethnicity (P = 0.86), religion (P = 0.16), and marital status (P = 0.99). Conclusion: Reproductive health decision was generally poor, and it was influenced by gender and class of the study. Therefore, Government should consider ways of improving reproductive health decision-making among the secondary school students, possibly by including it in their school curriculum. Future studies should identify locally applicable interventions to promote parent–child connectedness for improving reproductive health decision-making among adolescents.