Abstract:
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to find out causes and remedies of teenage
pregnancies among teenagers in Mumbwa District, Central Province Zambia. The
descriptive or survey research design was adopted for the study. The population
consisted of 6500 secondary school pupils from 11 secondary schools in Mumbwa
District, Central Province Zambia.The simple random sampling technique was used to
select five (5) secondary schools in Mumbwa District, and 28 pupils (girls) were
selected from each school. A total of 140 respondent (girls) were selected for the
study.Questionnaire comprising 17 items of the five-point Likert scale was used to
collect data.The instrument was face and content validated.Pilot study was conducted
in two secondary schools in Mumbwa District which were not included in the main
study to ascertain the reliability of the instrument. The instrument was administered to
30 respondents and the Cronbach’s Alpha value of 0.660 was obtained and 0.934
communality.Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and sorting method were used to
analyze data.The results of the study revealed that six factors responsible for causes of
teenage pregnancies as extracted by factor analysis are family factors, cultural factors,
education, information on sex education, social factors and reproductive health. The
results also revealed that ways of minimizing teenage pregnancy in secondary schools
were found to be abstinence, using contraception during sexual intercourse and
parent- child communication.
