The Survey of Knowledge and Attitude of University Students on Reproductive Health in the City of Yazd in 2010

Young people with a variety of reproductive health risks face infections such as sexually transmitted infections, HIV, early pregnancy, disease and death for mothers and new burns, and unwanted pregnancy that often leads to unsafe abortion and its complications. Moreover, according to World Health Organization estimates, about 38 percent of pregnancies worldwide are unwanted and regarding the rate of unwanted pregnancy (24%) in Iran the promotion of behavioral reproductive health is a must. The aim of this study is to determine the knowledge and attitude of the university students about reproductive health in the city of Yazd.

This is a descriptive, analytical, cross-sectional study. The research community were university Students in the city of Yazd In a sample of 755 who enrolled in the study and were randomly selected. The data collection tool in this study was the researcher constructed questionnaire with 46 questions being valid and reliable. At the end, data were collected and entered into SPSS software using descriptive statistics and analytical tests such as the Mann-Whitney test analysis, kruskal-wallis, chi-square and Spearman correlation coefficients.

Of all the participants in this study, 48/6% were male و82/1% single. Six persent of the fathers were illiterate and 35/5% of them had a university degree. Only 41/3% had passed the course on family planning. 89/9% were of undergraduate student, 34/7% studying in the faculty of engineering and technology, 2/1% in nursing, 47/4% in Yazd university and 13/8% in medical sciences. Mean and standard deviation of knowledge score reached 16/45±5/29 (range of score 0-27) and attitude questions 52/17±18/29 (range of score 16-80). The mean of knowledge and attitude of the students on reproductive health had a significant relation with sex, marital status, educational levels and university level degree.

53/6% of the students had a general knowledge on reproductive health. This seems consistent with a greater emphasis on paired educational aspects in universities in optimizing student's knowledge and attitude on reproductive health.