Tropical Medicine and Health volume 50 , Article number: 88 Cite this article. Metrics details. We investigate how individual, household, interpersonal, community and structural factors correlate with multiple sexual partnership of adolescent boys and young men in Ghana. Analytic sample of males aged 15—24 years who are sexually active and never married were used for the study.
The outcome variable for the study was two or more sexual partners in the last 12 months preceding the survey. Five models were fitted using multilevel mixed effects logistic regression to identify predictors of multiple sexual partners. The pooled data prevalence of multiple sexual partnership was The findings provide support for the social ecological argument that sexual health behaviours are influenced by individual, interpersonal, community and contextual characteristics.
Future policies and interventions seeking to address the increasing prevalence of multiple sexual partnerships among adolescent boys and young men should take into consideration family planning programmes and sexual education in affluent communities, secondary and higher institutions.
Worldwide, there has been considerable efforts in the quest to reduce and ultimately eradicate risky sexual behaviours RSBs among the population. Such measures adopted at the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and the International Conference on Population and Development ICPD include building healthy public policy, creating supportive environments for health, as well as meeting the sexual and reproductive health needs of individual women and men [ 1 , 2 ].
Despite these policies and interventions, the incidence of HIV infections and other sexually transmitted infections STI remains disproportionately high among young people [ 3 ]. Studies have linked this high rate of STIs and HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa to involvement in risky sexual behaviours RSBs such as early sexual debut [ 5 ], inconsistent and non-use of condoms and intergenerational sex [ 6 ]. MSPs can be operationalized as having two or more sexual partners [ 8 ]. This may be concurrent or serial and doubles as a serious public health concern [ 9 , 10 ].
