Abstract
This study investigated the relationship between Japanese junior high school students' access to sexual contents on the internet (SCI) and their sexual attitude and behavior. Participants were the students in the 7th-9th grades from a junior high school in Saitama prefecture (n=521, male=280, female=241). Data were collected in March 2008, using an anonymous questionnaire.
The main results were as follows.
1) Forty three percentage of the participants had accessed SCI and there was a significant gender difference (males 48.6%, females 36.6%).
2) About a half of the students (43.0%) had accessed SCI before they entered junior high school. The results also demonstrated a gender difference in the motivation for accessing SCI. Male students tended to access SCI with active reason( “out of curiosity" or “to relieve stress"), while female students tended to access SCI with passive reason ( “accidentally" or “be encouraged to see").
3) Male students who had accessed SCI had lower self-efficacy related to sexual behavior than those who had not accessed SCI. In addition, participants who had had first contact at the 6th grade or earlier, who had contacted with active reason, and who had accessed SCI for more than 30 minutes in the past month had more positive attitude toward sexual contents.
4) Multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that students who had accessed SCI were more likely to have had sexual intercourse than those who had not accessed SCI. For those who had accessed SCI, the contact reason and the access time in the past month were associated with an increased risk of having sexual intercourse.
The results of this study suggest that there is a need for education in relation to internet use particularly related to SCI to prevent risky sexual behaviors among adolescents.
