SHORT ARTICLE
Year : 2007 | Volume
: 32 | Issue : 1 | Page : 79--81
Psycho-social behavior pattern of unmarried adolescent girls in urban area of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh.
V Mala, D Kumar, S Dwivedi, SB Dabral
Deptt. of Community Medicine, MLN Medical College, Allahbad, UP-211 002, India
Correspondence Address:
V Mala
Deptt. of Community Medicine, MLN Medical College, Allahbad, UP-211 002
India
How to cite this article:
Mala V, Kumar D, Dwivedi S, Dabral S B. Psycho-social behavior pattern of unmarried adolescent girls in urban area of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. Indian J Community Med 2007;32:79-81
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How to cite this URL:
Mala V, Kumar D, Dwivedi S, Dabral S B. Psycho-social behavior pattern of unmarried adolescent girls in urban area of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. Indian J Community Med [serial online] 2007 [cited 2013 May 24 ];32:79-81
Available from: http://www.ijcm.org.in/text.asp?2007/32/1/79/53415 |
Full Text
Adolescence is a transitional period between childhood and adulthood in which many interrelated physical, social and psychological changes take place. Adolescent girls in India face several social restrictions, sex discrimination, nutritional deprivation and some other adverse situations unlike those in developed countries. With expansion of telecommunication and media across cultural boundaries, the problems of western societies are also being added up while very little or slow improvement is observed in previously existing ones [1] .
The health of adolescents, as well as their development is particularly dependent on their behavior, which is heavily influenced by the environment in which they live [2] . Psychosocial behavior of adolescents is a complex interaction of psychological growth, social environment, education and exposure to the outer world. It is very important to study different aspects of their psycho-social behavior as healthrelated outcomes are also affected by it. Uttar Pradesh (UP) being a state having annual growth rate of only 2.3% consistently falls below the national standards in health, education and general quality of life indicator [3] . The present study was conducted to investigate psycho-social behavior pattern of unmarried adolescent girls in relation to their school education in Allahabad city of U.P.
Material & Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted during November 2000 to October 2001 in urban area of Allahabad, a religious city of eastern UP. With the educational and other parameters being near to that for UP, Allahabad may be representative of the situation of adolescent girls of UP. On the basis of a pilot survey, an overall prevalence of psychosocial problems in adolescent girls was found to be about 30%. Accordingly, a sample of an optimum size of 396 unmarried female adolescents aged 10-19 years was taken with permissible error of 15%. A stratified multi-stage random sampling technique was adopted to select respondents and houseto-house survey was conducted.
Respondents willing to participate in the study whose parents also gave their respective consents were interviewed to collect information on their background characteristics and various aspects of psycho-social behavior on pre tested, semi-structured schedules. New study subjects replaced non-respondents. Respondents were interviewed in privacy and confidentiality was assured. Co-operation from existing health functionaries and organizations was also taken for conducting the survey.
Data were analyzed using SPSS software package. Chi square test for association of attributes and to test equality of several proportions and normal test of significance for testing significance of differences between proportions in two different groups were used.
Results
A total of 396 adolescent girls aged 10 to 19 years representing 204 (51.5%) low, 98 (24.7%) middle, and 94 (23.7%) high socio-economic strata participated in the study. For the purpose of studying influence of school education on psycho-social behavior, respondents were divided into two groups namely 'school attendees' and 'non-attendees'. Girls who were presently attending or attended the schools up to various levels of school education in adolescence phase after age 10 were included in school attendees group. Non attendees group included girls who were either illiterate or dropped the schools before start of adolescence phase and hence were totally unexposed to schooling during adolescence.
[Table 1] presents psycho-social behavioral aspects of respondents. Boldness/outspoken was the most preferred quality reported by 156 (39.4%) respondents followed by obedience reported by 146 (36.9%) respondents. Only 11 (2.8%) respondents reported shyness as a preferred quality. Opinion of respondents regarding qualities preferred varied significantly in the two groups. In school attendees group 134 (47.5%) respondents preferred bold/outspoken quality as compared to 22 (19.3%) in non-attendees group. Obedience was preferred by 82 (29.3%) among school attendees as compared to 64 (57.2) girls among non-attendees. The proportion of respondents having bold/outspoken as a preferred quality was found to be significantly higher (p0.05).
Among all respondents, 355 (89.7%) reported that they faced some type of family restrictions sometimes [Table 2]. Non-attendees were more likely (96.5%) to face family restrictions as compared to school attendees (86.9%). Among respondents facing restrictions, 152 (42.8%) reported to take these restrictions normally whereas 107 (30.1%) felt anger and 45 (12.7%) wished to revolt. Helplessness over restrictions imposed was least common reaction reported only by 51 (14.4%) respondents. Non-attendees felt comparatively more helpless (21.8%) as compared to school attendees (11.0%). Feeling angry was the most common reaction on non-attendees (35.4%) whereas maximum of school attendees (49.8%) took these restrictions normally. Reaction to family restrictions was found to be significantly associated with schooling status (p [4] but exposure to school education was not found to be helpful in changing their feeling with respect to this phenomenon. This might be due to lack of sexual education in the existing education curriculum. School education was found helpful in developing positive attitude towards future role, respect to elders, and in reducing fearful family atmosphere. However, obedience was more likely to be a preferred quality among non-attendees as compare to school attendees.
Although respondents in both the groups accepted restrictions during menses easily and majority of them had no problem against such restrictions yet the situation was not same with other type of family restrictions. This fact reflects that the restrictions during menses are taken as a normal tradition but other restrictions imposed may lead to negative reactions. School education was also helpful for creating positive attitude to face failure in life. To become angry and keeping silence on failure was not the most common reaction among non-attendees unlike school attendees who mostly wanted to increase their efforts after failures.
The study concludes that exposure to school education is helpful in reducing some undesired qualities of adolescent girls and also in developing their positive reactions to some normally occurring psycho-social situations. There is an urgent need of promoting education for girls with some modifications in the existing system of school education. Their education should make them capable of facing different types of psycho-social situations not at the cost of healthy traditional values of Indian culture.
Acknowledgement
Authors are highly grateful to the referee for his/her valuable comments for improving this paper. The assistance in typing of the manuscript by Mr. Parminder Kumar, Data Entry Operator in the Department of Community Medicine, Govt. Medical College Chandigarh is also acknowledged.
References
| 1 | Friedman H.L. Changing Patterns of Adolescent Sexual Behavior : Consequences for Health and Development. J. Adoles, Health 1992; 13:345-350. |
| 2 | Friedman H.L. The Health of adolescents : beliefs and behavior Soc Sci Med. 1989; 29: 309-15. |
| 3 | The World Bank, Population reference bureau, 2001. |
| 4 | Adams, B.N. Brownstein C.A., Rennols I M. et. al: The pregnant adolescent - a group approach. Adolescence, 11: 1976 467 - 485. |
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