How does being a student in a tertiary educational institution influence condom use in the Western Cape?

Type Working Paper - CSSR Working Paper No 301
Title How does being a student in a tertiary educational institution influence condom use in the Western Cape?
Author(s)
Issue 2012/301
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2012
Page numbers 1-27
URL http://www.cssr.uct.ac.za/node/829
Abstract
This paper explores whether being a student in a tertiary educational institution influences condom use. The data set used to conduct this analysis is wave 3 of the Cape Area Panel Survey, conducted on 4,750 young adults in the Cape Town Metropolitan area. The sample was restricted to only include respondents between (and including) the age of 17 and 26 who were sexually active. Condom use at last sex is the dependent variable in a series of logistic models. Being a student at a tertiary educational institution increases the odds of using a condom, however the odds of condom use decrease slightly with every variable we add relating to knowledge of HIV and proxies for cognitive capacity. When all of the confounding factors contributing to the effect of being a student are controlled for we find that students are 1.5 times more likely to use a condom than non-students. African women are the driving force of this result as the ‘student’ variable becomes insignificant for males and non-Africans when the sample is restricted by age and gender.

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