SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Human Kinetics And Health Education

CONTRIBUTORS:

Fidelis, M. N.
Okafor, J. O.

ABSTRACT:

This study was designed to determine the patterns of preventive sexual health behaviours towards sexually transmitted infections among tertiary institution students in Imo State. To facilitate the realization of this objective, twelve research questions and thirteen hypotheses guided the study. The cross-sectional descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population for the study was 63,297 tertiary institution students in Imo State. The proportional stratified random sampling technique was used in sampling the respondents. The sample for the study was 1399. The instrument used was a self-constructed questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 46 items. Three experts drawn from the Departments of Health Education and Public Health Technology validated the instrument, while reliability was established using the Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha method and a reliability of 0.76 was obtained. Descriptive statistics of mean was used in answering the research questions while inferential statistics of z-test and ANOVA were used in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. In testing the interaction effect, ANCOVA was employed. The finding of the study revealed that females practised adequate primordial preventive sexual health behaviour more than males. Males practised adequate primary, secondary and tertiary preventive sexual health behaviours more than females. From the finding, age group 20-24 showed adequate primary and secondary preventive sexual health behaviours more than other age groups. Students in year 5 practised preventive sexual health behaviour more than others. There was significant difference in the patterns of primordial, primary and tertiary preventive sexual health behaviours of male and female students, students of different age groups and students of different years of study. There was no significant interaction effect of gender, age and year of study on preventive sexual health behaviours of the subjects. Based on the findings of the study, recommendations which focused on how to improve and advance the practise of preventive sexual health behaviours were proffered.