Background

Identifying factors in childhood that are associated with later poor sexual health (e.g. early sexual behaviour, sexually transmitted infections, and teenage pregnancy) may be valuable in recognising and targeting populations at risk (Parkes et al., 2014). Lower school grades and school adjustment problems in childhood have been proposed as potentially important determinants of early sexual initiation (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2008), and recent studies using ALSPAC data found persistent school dislike in primary school to be associated with early sexual behaviour and sexual risk taking, reported at age 15 years (Parkes et al., 2014) and low educational attainment at 11 years to be associated with Chlamydia infection at 18 years (Crichton et al., 2014). We wish to extend this work, to examine the association between school academic achievement and school engagement in childhood with sexual health outcomes reported at age 21 years.

Aim

To determine if academic achievement or school engagement in Year 6 (age 10-11 years, final year of primary school) predict self-reported sexual health/behaviours at age 21 years.