BMC Public Health Research article The Internet as a source of reproductive health information among adolescent girls in an urban city in Nigeria Williams E Nwagwu BioMed Central Open Access Address: Africa Regional Centre for Information Science, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria Email: Williams E Nwagwu - willieezi@yahoo.com Published: 20 December 2007 BMC Public Health 2007, 7:354 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-7-354 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/354 Received: 23 January 2007 Accepted: 20 December 2007 © 2007 Nwagwu; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: There exists some research evidence regarding how adolescents utilize the Internet for health information seeking purposes. The purpose of this study is to understand how in-school and out-of-school adolescent girls in Owerri, Nigeria use online resources to meet their reproductive health information needs. The result could be considered very crucial in assessing the potential role of the Internet in providing health information to adolescent girls in a typical Nigerian urban city. Methods: A questionnaire was used to collect data from 1011 adolescent girls in selected secondary schools in the communities, and also from 134 out-of-school girls selected from the same communities. Results: More than 73% of the girls reported having ever used the Internet; more than 74% and 68% of them being in-school and out-of-school respectively. The in-school girls (43.9%) reported having home access more than the out-of-school (5.6%) although the out-of-school have used the Internet for finding reproductive and related information more than the in-school. While parents (66.22%) and teachers (56.15%) are the two sources most used to the in-school girls, friends (63.18%) and the Internet (55.19%) were reported by the out-of-school youth as the two most used sources of information to them. Conclusion: The Internet is not a first choice of source of reproductive health information for both the in-school and out-of-school adolescent girls in Owerri, Nigeria. The source is however, more commonly used by the out-of-school than the in-school, but the in-school have a more favorable assessment of the quality of information they obtain from the Internet. Background Adolescence is a critical period of human development often characterized by confusion, mixed interpretation and understanding of adult behaviour and environment, exuberance and a penchant for experimentation, espe- cially with drugs, alcohol and sex [1]. Of all challenges, those associated with sexual maturation are the most dis- tinctive as well as the most problematic [2]. This stage of development is accompanied by an upsurge of sex drives, the development of sexual values, and the initiation of sexual behavior [3]. The key concern about the health of young people is the extent to which they have access to resources that promote their development. Access to information and communication services is now seen as a universal right, and the United Nations is advocating for a global initiative for such access within this decade [4]. The Page 1 of 13 (page number not for citation purposes)