Abstract:
The study sought to determine the level of awareness and attitude towards HIV/AIDS risk factors for enhanced preventive measures among senior secondary school students in Ebonyi State. It was a convergent parallel mixed method design otherwise called triangulation. The population of the study comprised of all the 6912 Senior Secondary 2 (SS2) students in Ebonyi North Education Zone. The sample for the study comprised of 418 senior secondary school 2 (SS2) students. 378 students were used for quantitative data collection while 40 participated in the focus group discussion in Ebonyi North Education Zone, Ebonyi State. The instruments for data collection were a questionnaire developed by the researcher and a focus group discussion topic guide. The questionnaire was face validated by three experts from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the focus group discussion topic guide was validated by four experts from the University of Nigeria. The reliability of the questionnaire was also established using Cronbach’s Alpha method. Quantitative data analysis was done using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while t-test statistics was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Qualitative data analysis was done using thematic analysis method. Findings showed among other things that both male and female senior secondary school students, urban and rural senior secondary school students are aware of HIV/AIDS risk factors and do have positive attitude toward such HIV/AIDS risk as well as their preventive measures. The findings of the study further revealed that there was no significant difference in the mean responses of male and female students on attitude and preventive measures. Similarly, there was no significant difference in the mean responses of urban and rural senior secondary school students on awareness of HIV/AIDS risk factors and attitude towards the risk factors. However, there was a significant difference in the mean responses of male and female students on awareness of HIV/AIDS risk factors with the female students having a higher mean than their male counterparts. There was also a significant difference in the mean responses of urban and rural students on awareness of HIV/AIDS preventive measures with the urban students having a higher mean than those in the rural area. The findings were extensively discussed and appropriate recommendations were made to different stakeholders especially government, donor agencies, health organizations, media outlets and other concerned non-governmental organizations on how to improve HIV/AIDS prevention among senior secondary school students in Ebonyi State and Nigeria in general.
