Adolescent perspective on sexual debut in the South-West Indian Ocean: A regional study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although more and more reproductive health interventions in the South-West Indian Ocean, including those targeting adolescents, are performed on a regional basis, information on sexual initiation is scattered and difficult to compare. This study used unique qualitative data from 116 focus groups conducted in 2007 among in-school and out-of-school, younger and older, male and female adolescents in urban and rural areas of Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion, and Seychelles to provide a regional portrait of adolescent perceptions on sexual debut. The data show that premarital sexual activity during adolescence, especially after age 15 years, is viewed as normal and acceptable in Réunion and Seychelles, whereas such activity remains stigmatized, especially for adolescent girls, in Comoros, Madagascar, and to a lesser extent in Mauritius. However, in all five islands, traditional norms of masculinity and double sexual standards prevailed. Female premarital virginity was portrayed as an ideal that is increasingly in conflict with adolescents' contemporary life, and in Madagascar, Mauritius, and Comoros, and sexually active female adolescents are facing high social risks. Early childbearing and sexually transmitted diseases also emerged as important concerns for adolescents in Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles. Lack of access to reproductive health information and services seemed particularly serious among out-of-school and rural adolescents, especially in Comoros and Madagascar. Regional and gender differentials in norms surrounding sexual debut should be considered when developing reproductive health programs. Programs and services have to be strengthened throughout the region to address adolescent reproductive health concerns and better serve the needs of out-of-school and rural adolescents.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".