Is It the Timing? Short-Term Mobility and Coital Frequency in Agbogbloshie, Ghana

Abstract

Short-term mobility is often associated with increased sexual risk behavior. Mobile individuals often have higher rates of sexual risk behavior compared to non-mobile individuals, but the reasons why are not clear. Using monthly retrospective panel data from 202 men and 282 women in Agbogbloshie, Ghana, we tested whether short-term mobility was associated with changes in coital frequency, and whether the association was due to the act of travel in the given month (e.g., enabling higher risk behavior), the reason for travel, or an individual's travel propensity at other times in the year. Overnight travel specifically to visit family or friends, or for education, health, or other reasons, was associated with increased coital frequency for men. However, men with higher travel propensities had lower overall coital frequency and the act of traveling enabled more sex only for the most frequent male travelers. Men who seldom traveled had much higher coital frequency, but the act of traveling was not associated with additional sex acts. For women, travel for education, health, or other reasons increased coital frequency. Occasional female travelers had slightly more sex acts compared to non-mobile women, and the act of traveling for these women was associated with slight increases in coital frequency, supporting the enabling hypothesis. Highly mobile women had fewer sex acts per month on average. Our findings suggest that mobility characteristics measured on a broad temporal scale, as well as the reason for mobility, are important to understand the relationship between short-term mobility and sexual behavior.

Keywords: Circular migration; Ghana; Health; Sexual risk behavior; Temporal scale.

Fig. 1

Travel destinations of adults in Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, in 2012 by gender (n = 484)

Fig. 2

a Average number of total sex acts over the prior 12 months among adult men and women in Agbogbloshie, 2012. b Proportion of adult men and women mobile within a month, over the prior 12 months, in Agbogbloshie, 2012

Fig. 3

a Fixed-effects negative binomial model predicting total sex acts per month given any travel in a month, stratified by travel propensity, for men. Bars represent model coefficients and 95% confidence intervals for additional sex acts in a given month in which the man traveled, by overall level of travel propensity in the year. b Fixed-effects negative binomial model predicting total sex acts per month given any travel in a month, stratified by travel propensity, for men. Bars represent model coefficients and 95% confidence intervals for additional sex acts in a given month in which the woman traveled, by overall level of travel propensity in the year