Abstract
Background: In India, adolescent pregnancies are very common because of early marriages, lack of knowledge of contraception, and increasein sexual activity among adolescents,together leading to early childbearing inthe absenceof adequate and effective information and education on planning and spacing children. Objectives: Comparative measurement of knowledge regarding contraception and population control, and to determine the need of inclusion of sex education in curriculum. MaterialsandMethods: Studywascarried outinrandomlyselectedfourschools. Twowereofcentralboard(private) and twoofstateboard(government)ofAhmedabad,India.Atotalof530apparentlyhealthystudents,265fromeachofthetwo school types aged between 14 and 16 years were recruited for the study. A descriptive study, using a pretested, self- administeredquestionnaire,wascarriedouttoassesstheknowledgeandpracticeaboutcontraceptionandpopulationcontrol. Result: Majority of the subjects, 205 (77.35%) of private and 199 (75.04%) of government school, stated that uncontrolled population growth has adverse effects. Only 60% private and 52.83% government school students knew the correct legal age of marriage (po 0.05). All the respondents were unanimous in their desire for a gapbetween the ï¬rst and the second child, but private school students, signiï¬cantly more (84.90%) than the government school students (71.69%), preferred a gap of more than 2 years between the children (po 0.05). A signiï¬cantly higher proportion of central board private school students (90.94%) than state board government school students (72.75%) knew about condoms and contraceptive pills (po 0.05). Conclusion: Students showed mixed performance regarding knowledge and practice of contraception and population control. There are gaps in knowledge that need to be addressed by including population control and sex education in the school curriculum. Government school students are far behind regarding knowledge of contraception and population control as compared to central board private school students.