title: Associations between life contexts and early sexual initiation among young women in France.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Early sexual initiation (before age 16) has been linked to an increased risk of teenage pregnancy and STDs. Most research on correlates of early sexual initiation is from the United States; no similar work has been conducted in France, where the sociocultural environment differs.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cross-sectional data from the 2010 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey were used to examine the relationships of personal, family, peer, school and neighborhood characteristics with early sexual initiation among 1,094 French females in grades 8-10. Two-level logistic regressions were used to identify associations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Twenty-five percent of respondents had had sex before age 16. Early sexual initiation was primarily -associated with individual-level characteristics. Young women had an elevated likelihood of having initiated sex early if they went out after school at least four times a week (odds ratio, 2.0), had repeated a grade (1.8), lived with a single parent or in a stepfamily (1.8 and 1.5, respectively), perceived a low level of parental monitoring (1.6) or had two or more male friends (2.8). At the environmental level, respondents who attended school in areas with a high proportion of residents who were foreigners had a reduced likelihood of having initiated sex early (0.5-0.6).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although early sexual initiation in France was essentially linked to individual-level variables, further research is needed to understand its relationship with neighborhood characteristics. Such studies should include additional environmental variables, test new hypotheses and employ a longitudinal approach.
authors.affiliation: Sonia Jovic, Cyrille Delpierre and Mariane Sentenac are epidemiologists; Catherine Arnaud is a physician and an epidemiologist; and Virginie Ehlinger is a biostatistician-all at INSERM U1027, Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jovic
authors.forename: Cyrille
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Delpierre
authors.forename: Virginie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ehlinger
authors.forename: Mariane
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sentenac
authors.forename: Honor
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Arnaud
authors.forename: Emmanuelle
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Godeau
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D003075:Coitus; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D016017:Odds Ratio; D011247:Pregnancy; D011253:Pregnancy in Adolescence; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012931:Social Environment