| dc.description.abstract | In Zambia, approximately 7.2% of sexually active girls, aged 15-19, reported having had a
sexual partner. The National Health Strategic Plan 2017-2021 highlighted the high adolescent
birth rate which was at 141 per 1000 live births between the year’s 2013 and 2014. According
to the laws of Zambia, an adolescent girl can consent for sex at the age of 16 and above; early
childbearing is any pregnancy before the age of 16 which is the focus for this study. This
study was investigating factors that influence early childbearing among adolescent girls in
some selected rural districts of Zambia at baseline of the RISE cluster randomised trial. The
investigated factors included; cultural beliefs, social economic factors, knowledge and access
to reproductive health information and peer pressure.
The study was a nested quantitative cross-sectional design embedded in a Cluster
Randomised Trial of the Research Initiative to Support the Empowerment (RISE) of girls.
Participants were girls attending grade seven at various schools in 2016. Information on
factors that could influence the participants’ view on childbearing were collected at baseline.
A complete enumeration of approximately 4900 girls recruited in 12 rural districts of Central
and Southern provinces was analysed. Descriptive statistics are presented as frequencies and
percentages in tables. To check for the association between the outcome variable which was
categorical in nature and the independent variables, Chi-squared test was used or Fisher’s
exact test for frequencies which were less than five. Univariate and Multiple Logistic
regression analysis was used to test the association between independent factors and early
childbearing. Clustering in the study was accounted for using robust standard errors.
Results: The findings showed that more than two-thirds 3189 (73.7%) of the participants had
no knowledge regarding adolescent sexual and reproductive health information on family
planning use, only 1137( 26%) had knowledge. A number of adolescents with mobile phones
235(77.6%) agreed to engaging into early childbearing practices as opposed to those who had
none. Majority of adolescent girls 227 (69%) who agreed to early childbearing were aged 10
to 15 years, whilst the least number of adolescents who agreed to early childbearing were
99(30.3%) in the age ranges of 16 to 20 years. In addition, results reviled that one-year
increase in age of an adolescent girl increases early childbearing by 30% (OR=1.30, 95% CI
(1.01, 1.67), p- value=0.03). Overall, very few factors (mobile phone and age) at baseline
were found to be associated with child bearing. In conclusion, Only mobile phone use and
age were associated with early childbearing at baseline.
Cultural norms and socio-economic factors were not associated with early childbearing in this
study. Given that this information was at baseline of the original cluster randomised trial, the
information suggests that there was no evidence of a difference in factors that may affect
early childbearing. Hence, in the original study, it appears like randomisation worked as there
is no evidence of difference on a number of possible factors that may affect early
childbearing.
Key Words: Early Child bearing Knowledge, Adolescent, Reproductive health. | en |
