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What’s Religion Got to Do with It? Exploring College Students’ Sexual and Reproductive Health Knowledge and Awareness of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Relation to Their Gender and Religiosity

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between religiosity and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) knowledge and awareness of campus SRH services among college students on a racially and ethnically diverse college campus. The sample included 996 undergraduate students at a large public university in California. For women, there was a consistent pattern across religious affiliations of more frequent attenders reporting lower SRH knowledge than less frequent attenders. These findings suggest that higher rates of religious attendance among Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical women pose a risk for lower SRH knowledge. The results suggest the need for SRH outreach and educational materials targeting men in general, who had lower levels of SRH knowledge and awareness of SRH services overall, and taking religiosity into account, particularly with regard to women.

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Notes

  1. A small subsample (n = 71; 7% of the total sample) of respondents completed an online version of the survey, almost all of these doing so in computer classroom settings.

  2. The larger sample from which the sample for this study is drawn included students identifying as lesbian, gay, and bisexual. Future analyses will focus on this population.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our former students, Jessica Ross, Amber Melvin, and Kanan Cupp, for inspiring us to conduct this research and for their input on the survey and assistance with data entry. We would also like to thank Evelyn Vega and Jessica Painter for their assistance with data entry. Our thanks also go out to Heidi Girling, Coordinator of the Health Resource Center, for her input on our survey design.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA

    Nancy Martin

  2. Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd, MHB-819, Long Beach, CA, 90840, USA

    Lori Baralt

  3. Department of Health Science, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA

    Claire Garrido-Ortega

Authors
  1. Nancy Martin
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  2. Lori Baralt
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  3. Claire Garrido-Ortega
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Correspondence to Lori Baralt.

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All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Martin, N., Baralt, L. & Garrido-Ortega, C. What’s Religion Got to Do with It? Exploring College Students’ Sexual and Reproductive Health Knowledge and Awareness of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Relation to Their Gender and Religiosity. J Relig Health 57, 1856–1875 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-017-0432-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-017-0432-y

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