Resum

Objectives: To find out the kno- wledge and attitudes of students of 4th year Secondary Education in the region of Alto and Medio Vinalopó (Alicante) in the framework of an emotional and sexual educational intervention. Material and Methods: Cross- sectional descriptive study, self-fill questionnaire in a random cluster sample of 338 students of 4th year Secondary School. Some of the items of the questionnaire were related to contraceptive methods, sexually transmitted diseases, the use of the condom, emotional relationships an equality. A certain score, between 1 and 10, was given to each student according to their answers. The analysis of the data (absolute fre- quencies, relative frequencies in percentage, contingency tables and statistical significance) was carried out with the statistical program EPIINFO 6.04 Results: Both in terms of kno- wledge and attitudes an average score of 8.55 was obtained. By sex, it has been observed that girls are bet- ter informed than boys, being the scores obtained in the survey of 8.697 for girls against 8.4 for boys (p= 0.02). In terms of attitudes, also girls have a better attitude (8.8) regarding emotional relationships and equality than boys (8.2). It has been observed that almost 38% of boys against the 20% of girls do not manifest an acceptance of different sexual trends. In both groups it was found a high percentage of students who still believe that AIDS is not transmitted through oral sex. One out of four boys think that boys are more clever that girls; 42 %, both boys and girls, think that it is more normal that girls, rather than boys, like boys Conclusion: Adolescents of 4th year Secondary School from our department are well-informed according to other similar studies. However, it is necessary to continue working in the following issues: emotional and sexual education since still a great number of boys do not accept homosexuality; HIV transmission, and gender equality.