Objective   To understand the current knowledge, attitudes and practice among umarried ado lescents in rural areas of Shanghai.

  Methods   Astructured questionnaire survey of 806 adolescents in three rural townships was conducted to explore young people's sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviour.

  Results   In general, most of the young subjects had a certain level of puberty knowledge, but lacked systematic understanding and clear conceptions of human reproduction system and function.Boys.knowledge was better than girls.Students from technology schools had lower knowledge score than others.Most young subjects hold an open attitude toward teenage love and sex.Teenager sexual behaviour in the area and the use of contraception during first inter course was lo weven though almost half of the sexually active youth knew the potential results.The main sources of sexual knowledge were school, medical books/journals and classmates.The majority of subjects thought sexeducation among adolescents was necessary and school sexeducation appeared only partially to fill the expressed need.

  Conclusion   A better understanding of current sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviour among adolescents was important to design effective intervention program welcomed by teenagers.Sexual education for adolescents was such an increasigly urgent task that the whole society should put emphases on it.