Conocimientos, actitudes y comportamiento sexual en un grupo de adolescentes chilenos

introduction: the sexuality is one of the biggest concerns for the adolescent, his family and the society. objective: to determine knowledge, attitudes and sexual behavior in a group of chilean adolescents. material and methods: a descriptive and quantitative study was carried out in the eighth region of chile in the year 2003. a sample of 398 students of county's liceo was selected. variables were analyzed as sexual behavior, knowledge and attitudes it has more than enough sexuality. for the statistical analysis we used the χ 2 and mann and whitney tests. results: the average of age for the adolescents was 16.1 ± 1.3 years. with and interval of 14 to 19 years. 72.9% lived with both parents, 76.4% had sexual education, more than 50% they refers to have received parents' sexual information from professors, friends and communication media, 89.8% of the men and 92.9% of the women mentioned to know some birth-control method. 84.4% recognized the preservative as method that prevents the sexually transmitted infections (sti) and hiv/aids. 21.6% declared to have had sexual relationships, the age 15.1 ± 1.8 year-old average. 53.5% that have begun sexual activity recognized not to have used any birth-control method in his first sexual relationship. the number of even sexual in the studied group it reached an average of 1.8 couples. conclusions: in spite of having certain degree of knowledge it has more than enough sexuality, the adolescents assume behaviors of risk for their sexual and reproductive health.