Adolescent Pregnancy and Family History of Adolescent Pregnancy in El Salvador City, Philippines

Abstract

Adolescent pregnancy has been a common problem not only in the Philippines but also in most countries of the world, may it be developing or first world. In this study, the prevalence of adolescent pregnancy was determined throughout the 15 barangays in El Salvador City using a correlational-descriptive approach. A total of 497 respondents were taken into consideration. The majority of the respondents were 16-18 years old at the time of the study and came from barangay Molugan and Poblacion. Adolescent pregnancy was also determined to be at 32.39% or 161 out of the 497 respondents which is relatively high and comparable to the neighboring countries in Asia. Correlational statistics was also employed to determine the correlation between prevalence of adolescent pregnancy and family history of adolescent pregnancy. A range of strong negative, no relationship, strong positive, to negligible relationship was shown in all 15 barangays. Six out of the fifteen barangays showed positive relationship while five barangays showed negligible relationship. Overall, there was a negligible relationship between the variables studied. This supports the idea that adolescent pregnancy is a multifactorial problem which requires multifaceted intervention strategies and approaches to minimize adolescent childbearing risks. Furthermore, it is recommended that various steps should be taken to develop pregnancy prevention intervention programs targeting young women according to maternal and sibling adolescent pregnancy histories, increase awareness campaign in schools and public places on the risks of adolescent pregnancies, and lastly to improve childhood intervention and youth development programs for reducing unintended and unplanned adolescent pregnancy.