BMC Public Health 2007, 7:354 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/354 mation. The very low percentages of girls in this study who perceived information gleaned on the Internet as high quality leads one to ask from which of the myriads of reproductive health websites from which the girls actu- ally sought information. However, there exist, in addition, local disabling factors such as erratic power supply, low level of penetration, low level of Internet literacy as well as cultural factors which may obstruct the significance of the Internet for reproductive health information among the girls in the city. Another relates to the fact that using questionnaire to study reproductive health information use of the Internet might be tricky because the respondent could be telling the researcher what the researcher might want to hear. But getting around these problems is very difficult – one alternative would require creating logs in the servers of the cafes where the adolescents go surfing for information, and analyzing this later – a very unethical technique. If there is any opportunity for further study on this issue, adequate training of the respondents regarding use of the Internet, the objectives of the study as well as increased number of out-of-school might reduce the diffi- culties of generalising the result presented here [24]. Conclusion This study has revealed the extent to which in-school and out-of-school adolescent girl youth in Owerri, an ancient community and capital of Imo State in Nigeria are using the Internet to meet their information needs. The study has also shown the extent to which the Internet could serve as a reproductive health information resource to both in-school and out-of-school adolescents. There is a wide disparity in the characteristics of the two categories of respondents in the study, and this informed the sepa- rate examination of the variables. Although the two groups are incomparable in terms of magnitude, the study gives an indication that in-school and out-of-school ado- lescents might be facing different information challenges as shown in their different patterns of use of the global infrastructure. Further studies are required to understand how to integrate parental and other care givers' roles in adolescent's use of the Internet for health information seeking, and also to understand why home-based Internet access serves adolescents other than reproductive health information purposes. Competing interests The author(s) declare that they have no competing inter- ests. Acknowledgements This paper was developed from a larger project with financial support from MacArthur Funds for Leadership Development, Abuja, Nigeria in 2005 (Number 0483064000GSS). References 1. 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