Sexual Health Education Resources in the Southeast of Iran

To determine the most usual resources that adolescents and teenagers are using to learn about sexual issues. A cross-sectional exploratory study implemented in June 2015 in Zahedan, the capital city of Sistan-va-Baluchestan Province, located in the southeast of Iran.
Using convenient sampling method, from among student of two large universities in Zahedan, 134 students 18 to 22 years old, accepted invitation for filling a self-administered anonymized questionnaire containing, 8 semi-closed questions about sexual issues.
44.9% of women and 41.6% of men mentioned one of their friends as their tutors. While 42.0% of women mentioned their mothers as one of their tutors, only 18.8% of them believed that more than 50% of their sexual knowledge came from their mothers. 23.1% of male participants and 36.2% of female ones alleged to know personally people of their own ages who had been subjected to sexual abuse or harassment earlier in their life.
In Iran, educating sexual issues to adolescents is badly in need of organization and management. While the rule of a committed extra-family tutor (e.g. an officially appointed school teacher) might not be considered a solution, parents have to be prompted for filling the gap.