Youth and AIDS, 1998

The research focused not only on the attitude of high school students in Ljubljana to AIDS, but also addressed all major issues about the sexuality of young people. In addition to issues directly related to the attitude towards AIDS, the study sheds light on young people’s views on sexuality, the extent and dynamics of their sexual experiences and their own sexuality. In the first part of the research, we investigated issues related to socio-demographic factors and their impact on sexual behaviour, the characteristics of psychosocial development of the population under consideration, the characteristics of partnerships, the problem of sexual experience, the use of contraception, and the understanding of the problem of AIDS and their views on people living with HIV infection. With the help of demographic factors, as could be shown by foreign research affecting sexual behaviour, we also wanted to confirm in the study not only the connection between these two factors, but also to see what significantly affects the specific sexual behaviour of Ljubljana secondary school students. The second group of questions consists of questions concerning respondents’ views on norms and behaviours in sexual behavior. This includes questions about political orientations, prejudices on general orientation positions and questions concerning direct sexual behaviour and perceptions of sexual behaviour. The third set of questions concerned the problems and basic features of psychosexual development. The fourth set of questions addressed the question of constant relationships between respondents, about feelings towards their partner, about projection situations regarding the future of the relationship, about the use of different sexual techniques in relation to and about initiatives to use different techniques. There were also questions about the first and last sexual intercourse.