2012 Volume 54 Issue 1 Pages 27-36
The purpose of this study was to explore the potential psychosocial predictors for the initiation of sexual intercourse among Japanese junior high school students based on the longitudinal survey. Participants were the 536 students who entered a junior high school in Saitama prefecture from 2005 to 2007. Data were collected at the end of each school year using an anonymous questionnaire and 466 subjects were analyzed who answered all three surveys.
The main results were as follows.
1）The percentages of students who had ever experienced sexual intercourse increased from 2.9％ in the first grade to 9.0％ in the third grade for boys and 1.4％ in the first grade to 6.5％ in the third grade for girls.
2）Among the students who had never experienced sexual intercourse at the first grade, the students who had initiated sexual intercourse until the third grade had higher scores of peer- and body-related self-esteem, prosocial skills, and decision making skills, but lower scores of family-related self-esteem and withdrawal social behavior.
3）Multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that students with lower family-related self-esteem and higher prosocial skills and aggressive social behaviors in the first grade were more likely to have had sexual intercourse until the third grade.
The results of this study suggest that it is important to develop a program that focuses on enhancing family-related self-esteem to effectively reduce the likelihood of sexual intercourse among Japanese junior high school students.
