Preventive Behaviour Towards Sexually Transmitted Infections Among Female Students in Public Secondary Schools in Rivers West Senatorial District, Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the preventive behaviour towards sexually transmitted infections among female secondary school students in Rivers West Senatorial District, Rivers State. The descriptive research design was adopted. The population for the study consisted of sixteen thousand, six hundred and ninety-nine female senior secondary school students in Rivers West Senatorial District. A simple random sampling technique was adopted to select a sample size of 860. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire titled Preventive Behaviour towards STI Questionnaire (PBSQ) with a reliability index of 0.84. The data analysis was done with the aid of the Statistical Product for Service Solution (SPSS) version 23.0 using mean, standard deviation, T-test, and ANOVA at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that preventive behaviour towards sexually transmitted infections was poor (2.31±0.71). The result of this study revealed that poor preventive behaviour towards sexually transmitted infections was found more among those who were aged: 15-19 years (2.40±0.66), followed by those aged 20-24 years (2.20±0.68). The result also revealed that poor preventive behaviour towards sexually transmitted infections was found more among those in the urban areas (2.32±0.71), and among those in SSS (2.33±0.69), than those in JSS (2.29±0.70). Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that, female students in public secondary school in Rivers West Senatorial District had poor preventive behaviour towards sexually transmitted infections. It was recommended among others that government should establish functional youth-friendly Centres in all public secondary school vicinities where students can access sexual/reproductive health information without fear of prejudice.

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