Practice of COVID-19 Preventive Measures among In-School Adolescents in Enugu South Education Zone

Abstract

This study examined the practice of preventive measures of COVID-19 among in-school adolescents Enugu south education zone. Descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population for the study comprised 6,987 in-school adolescents in 11 public secondary schools in Enugu South Local Government Area. A sample of 320 in-school adolescent was drawn for the study. A multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted in selection of the sample. The instrument was the researcher’ structured questionnaire titled Practice of Preventive Measures for COVID-19 Questionnaire (PPMCQ). The instrument consisted of 14-items which elicited information on Practice of Preventive Measures for COVID-19 from in-school adolescents. Internal consistency of the instrument was determined using Cronbach alpha co-efficient of 0.87 was obtained. Only 318 out of 320 copies of the PPMCQ administered to the participants were used for data analysis. Frequency and percentage were used to answer the research questions while Chi-squared test was used to test the null hypothesis. The results on the overall proportion of in-school adolescents who practice the preventive measures for COVID-19 are low proportion that has good practice of COVID-19 preventive measures. The results on practice of the preventive measures by age and gender are ; results showed that in-school adolescents aged 15-19 had more respondents with very good practice 57(37.25%) while female in-schools adolescents had more respondent with good practice 58(33.91%) and 51(31%) had very good practice. The study recommended that Practice of preventive measures for COVID-19 is vital among in-school adolescents due to the vast amount of misinformation shared on social media that is beclouding people’s understanding of COVID-19. Therefore more emphasis should be placed on educating in-school adolescents about this disease and practice of preventive measures.