Personal Hygiene Practices among Senior Secondary School Students in Ezza South Local Government Area of Ebonyi State

Abstract

Health issues related to poor personal hygiene practices in the schools are on the increase. Therefore, this study focused on personal hygiene practices among senior secondary school students in   Ezza South Local Government of Ebonyi State. The study was guided by four purposes of the study, four research questions and three hypotheses.  The study adopted descriptive survey research. The population of this study consisted of all the 35,236 SS1 and SS2 students in Government Schools in Ezza South Local Government Areas. The sample size of 199 determines using Taro Yamane formula participated in the study. However, multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted to draw the participants. The instrument for data collection was self-developed structured questionnaire entitled: Personal Hygiene Practices Questionnaire (PHPQ). Cronbach Alpha procedure was used to determine the reliability of the instrument and overall reliability coefficient r=0.83 was obtained. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer all the research questions. Furthermore, t-test statistic was used to test all the hypotheses. The entire hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance  The  study found that Senior secondary school students in Ezza South Local Government Area  had poor personal  hygiene practices  2.43±0.36), Both male (2.40 ±0.36)  and female (2.46±0.35) secondary school students in Ezza south Local Government in Ebonyi State  had poor personal hygiene practices.  Secondary school students age 14-15years (2.41±0.36) and 16years and above (2.44±0.36) had poor personal hygiene practices in Ezza South Local Government Area. Both SS1 (2.43±0.43) and SS2 (2.42±0.31) Government secondary school students in Ezza South Local Government Area had poor personal hygiene practices. Furthermore, There were no significant differences in the level of  personal hygiene practices among senior  secondary schools in Ezza South Local Government Areas of Ebonyi State by gender (t-val=1.283, p-val=0.201),age(t-val=0.459,P=0.674) and class level (t-val=0.266,P=0.799). The study concluded that senior secondary school students in Ezza South Local Government Area had poor personal hygiene practices. The study recommended among others that attention should be given to the monitoring of personal hygiene practices of secondary school students both males, females ages and all the class level by health educators in the schools.