Psychological empowerment in sexual health in high school students from a Nicaraguan rural school

Abstract

 This research focused on the implementation of a program aimed at strengthening psychological empowerment in high school students, which is why it poses the following research question:What impact does the psychological empowerment program have on the sexual health of adolescents at the Alberto Berrios school, Chacraseca, April-November 2020?The study is part of the initiatives that aim to contribute to the process of achieving the goals of Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) "Health and well-being".It is of a quasi-experimental type, in which 75 active high school students participated. To obtain information, the following instruments were used: Survey of sociodemographic characteristics, survey on courtship, empowerment and sexual and reproductive health in adolescent students prepared by Casique (2012), the Scale of Knowledge and Attitudes in sexual health and reproductive health of Vargas Ruiz ( 2005).For data analysis, the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 was used.The main changes obtained are detailed: Differences in the results of the pre and post-test, presenting an increase in the high level and therefore a reduction in the level of both self-perception, gender roles, partner power and sexual power. These differences are significant (self-perception: t(74)=3.11, P=0.02; gender roles: t(74)=2.922, P=0.005; partner power: t(74)=5.589, P=0.000), except in sexual power: t(74)=0.698, P=0.488).An improvement was found in the indicators of students' knowledge regarding sexual health, increasing the percentage of students who present an adequate concept of what sexual health means.Regarding the indicators of the attitude towards sexual health, an improvement in the results was also found.