BMC Public Health 2007, 7:354 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/354 cafés (56.12%) more than home based services (31.11%) is more geared towards using the Internet for reproductive health information searching. All the respondents who have ever used the Internet (34.12%) and who have email accounts (29.09%) also reported having used the Internet for seeking reproductive health information. Regarding why the adolescents would prefer using the Internet instead of other sources, the response to this question is presented in Figure 1, and it shows that the out-of-school adolescents want an information source that they could consider private in addition to the fact that they considered Internet as having unrestricted access fol- lowed by lack of alternatives. Variety of information, ease of use and the relevance of information are the least. Pri- vacy was found to be significantly associated with age, liv- ing status and adolescents older than 16 years (59.19%) compared with the younger ones (40.81%) considered the privacy factor an influence to their choice of Internet as a health information source. Adolescents who are living with their parents (36.15%), in-school boarding houses (24.10%), other hostel types (20.34%) and other types of living statuses (19.31%) also would prefer the Internet because of its privacy attribute. The children of the public servant parents (17.19%) less than those of self-employed parents (47.62%) and those of private sector employee parents (45.19%) shared this same view. None of the other characteristics of the respondents was significantly related to the privacy attribute of the Internet. The health topics that most attracted the out-of-school youth to the Internet were the need to get information about sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and sexual activities (Table 4). Apart from other category of needs, the youths seem to be less bordered about pregnancy- related information as well as fitness and exercise, but not as much for drug and sexual abuse and diet/nutrition. Out-of-school of various parental occupational categories also showed significant differences in the health topics for which they used the Internet. For instance, adolescents younger than 16 expressed more interest on HIV/AIDS (56.15%) and sexually transmitted diseases (66.35%) information than their older sisters, 43.85% and 33.75% respectively, but no significant differences were estab- lished for the others. There is also a significant relation- ship between the use of the Internet for sexual activities information with those youths whose parents are public servants (34.12%), self-employed (29.20%) or private sector-employed (36.68%). Let us now compare the in- school youth with the out-of-school ones in respect of the key issues that are emerging in this study. Regression analysis result Using regression analysis, some reproductive health issues for which the adolescents use Internet for information were predicted using the respondents' demographic char- acteristics, and the result is shown in Table 5. The slopes (B) show the extent of change on the dependent variables (reproductive health issues) that could be accounted for by a unit change in the independent variables (demo- graphic variables), while the Se signifies the standard error of the regression coefficient. Negative or positive slopes therefore indicated the direction of this change. On this account therefore, Tables 5 and 6 show that living status of the students made positive, although fractional and sig- nificant contribution on the use of the Internet to seek for information about gay/lesbian/bisexual and STD issues. On the other hand, living status made negative but signif- icant contributions on use of the Internet for information seeking about physical changes, as well as on contracep- tion, pregnancy and parenting. Age positively predicts physical changes, as well as pregnancy and parenting but negatively predicts contraception, STD, and Gay/lesbian or bisexual issues. School status predicts physical changes, contraception, STD, gay/lesbian/bisexual issues, preg- nancy and parenting with negative values for the last two variables, but the prediction for parenting is not signifi- cant. Educational status of parents, household appliances and occupational status of parents consistently positively predicted all the reproductive health information use of the Internet although educational status of parents and pregnancy, educational status of parents and pregnancy are not significant. Table 5: A regression analysis of interest in using Internet for health information Physical changes Contraception STD Gay, lesbian or bisexual issues Pregnancy Parenting Living status B -0.01 -0.34 0.08 0.41 -2.91 -1.34 Se 0.13 0.11 0.21 0.18 0.08 2.11 P 0.01 0.03 0.04 0.02 0.01 0.01 Age B 0.21 -1.14 -1.8 -1.11 1.01 3.11 Se 0.32 0.21 0.19 0.11 0.02 0.90 P 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 School status B 1.11 1.31 0.18 3.40 -2.31 -2.14 Se 0.02 0.01 0.10 0.01 0.01 0.19 P 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 Ns Page 8 of 13 (page number not for citation purposes)