2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

A qualitative research focused on professional health care educators' conscious towards providing education on sexual health and/or HIV/AIDS prevention in Japan

Research Project

Project/Area Number	21510296
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Gender
Research Institution	Osaka University of Economics and Law
Principal Investigator	MATSUBARA Hiroko 大阪経済法科大学, アジア太平洋研究センター, 研究員 (40465654)
Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha)	IWASHITA Kiyoko 国際医療福祉大学, 大学院・保健医療学研究科, 教授 (80337443)
Project Period (FY)	2009 – 2011
Keywords	性教育 / ジェンダー / セクシュアリティ / 性感染症予防 / 性意識 / 性行動
Research Abstract	This research tried to portrait emotional conflicts of professional health care educators, such as public health doctors, nurses, midwives, teachers, school nurses, when they provide sexual and/or HIV/AIDS prevention programs in their classes or trainings, and to find the processes how they overcome those difficulties. Systematic review of literatures since 1983 can be found on the three websites, which are"Ichushi Web","CINII"and"Webcat Plus", and they show the number of literatures focused on sexual health education has increased since 2001 in Japan. However, it also tells us that there are few qualitative researches about educators. In addition, the result of the interviews of 23 educators, who dedicated sexual health programs since 1997, revealed that those who tried to provide programs diligently did not feel strong conflicts between their own morals and their students' or pupils'sexual behaviors. Their motivation was kept by their occupational responsibility for educational needs to students or citizens, only with the support of environmental factors, such as having respectful and close role models, positive atmosphere of the workplaces where they can challenge the new methods, good accessibility to new information, and enough budget allocation. There were no cases which referred that individual thoughts and believes about their own sexual morals and behaviors affected the quality of their programs. However, several cases showed the possibility that gender difference might influence on their mind of professional responsibility. Therefore, it concludes that further research focusing on male professional educators is needed.