BMC Public Health 2007, 7:354 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/354 Table 6: A regression analysis of issues of interest in using Internet for health information Educational status of parents Household appliance Occupational status B 0.21 0.21 0.28 0.21 2.82 0.31 SE 0.23 0.21 0.21 0.28 0.28 0.21 P 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 ns 0.01 B 1.42 0.42 1.29 0.32 2.82 0.38 SE 0.13 0.13 0.19 0.18 0.08 0.11 P 0.01 ns 0.01 0.01 ns 0.01 B 0.32 0.32 2.21 1.31 1.72 0.38 SE 0.22 0.23 0.39 0.34 0.23 0.35 P 0.001 0.001 ns 0.001 0.001 0.001 Physical changes Contraception STD Gay, lesbian or bisexual issues Pregnancy Parenting Comparing the two groups Based on the data presented so far, a comparison can be made between in-school and out-of-school adolescent girls regarding using the internet to seek for reproductive health information. A crucial difference between the two groups relates to the sources of information they used. Table 3 shows that the top three sources used by the in- school girls are parents, teachers and public health cam- paigns whereas the out-of-school resorted to friends, Internet and boyfriends/girlfriend. The in-school resorted to grandparents (11.99%) the least in comparison with the out-of-school (29.1%), although this difference is reportedly not significant. While the Internet ranked ninth for the in-school, it ranked third for the out-of- school. Regarding health topics for which the adolescents sought information, Table 4 shows that the in-school sought information about HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted dis- eases and sexual abuse the most compared with the out- of-school whose information needs focused on sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and sexual activities but the difference between HIV/AIDS and sexual abuse is not significant. The in-school sought information the least about fitness and exercise unlike the out-of-school who were least concerned about drug abuse. Using a multivariate modeling, Table 5 shows that school status continuously predicted all the listed variables except parenting. The in-school also reported being more Table 7: Perception about health information on the Internet capable in finding information in the Internet than the out-of-school, despite reporting using the facility for reproductive health information the least. Also previous Internet use was associated with more confidence in using the Internet for reproductive health information more for the in-school than for the out-of-school. Table 7 shows that the two groups varied with respect to their perception about the quality of health information found in the Internet, with the in-school reporting the information as trustworthy and relevant more than the out-of-school who rather found the information as accurate and evi- dent. Despite the fact that the out-of-school are wont to use the Internet for reproductive health information more than the in-school, Table 7 shows that the in-school assessed information in the Internet to be of higher qual- ity than the out-of-school did. Discussion This study reveals that although the girl youth reported using the Internet in their quest to be informed about their reproductive health, the Internet serves the out-of- school more than they do the in-school. This fact holds irrespective of their living status, occupational and educa- tional status of parents, age of the youth and availability of household appliances in their homes. In 2002, 90% of the youths in the US reported having gone online once [26], 63% have done this in Ghana in 2004 [25], whereas 74% of youth in this study have ever used the Internet. Our result shows, as in Ghana, that despite the fact that out-of-school adolescents had much less access to the Total (N = 1145) M SD In-school (n = 1011) M SD Out-of-school (n = 134) M SD Students t-statistic Useful Easy to read Trustworthy Relevant Accurate Visually appealing Source is evident 6.8 6.7 4.9 3.3 5.9 5.4 6.9 2.9 2.5 2.5 2.4 2.3 2.9 2.8 12.1 11.1 14.1 13.0 9.1 5.4 5.9 5.9 5.5 5.5 5.4 5.3 4.9 8.8 2.2 1.3 4.1 3.9 7.1 4.3 6.1 3.2 3.2 4.1 4.0 2.0 4.8 5.7 1.1 ns ns 5.5 ns ns 4.5 Page 9 of 13 (page number not for citation purposes)