Attitude Towards Information on Contraceptives Use and Sexuality in Relation to The Society Among Public Secondary School Girls in Ebonyi State of Nigeria.

Abstract

Equipping adolescent girls with accurate information pertaining to sexuality would inculcate in them, desired values thus preventing uninformed sexual decisions, risk sexual behaviours and its consequential effects in future. This study therefore determined attitude towards information on contraceptives use and sexuality in relation to the society among public secondary school girls in Ebonyi State. The descriptive survey design was employed for the study. To guide the study, two specific objectives with corresponding research questions were formulated. The population of  the study comprised  63,793 public secondary school girls  out of which a  sample of 1,080 public seconadary school girls was chosen. The sample technique adopted was multistage sampling procedure of 5stages. The instrument for the study was a self-constructed attitude towards information on contraceptives use and sexuality in relation to the society questionnaire (ATIOCUASIRSQ) framed to reflect the contents of research questions. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha and the reliability coefficient of each sub-scale of the questionnaire namely; attitude towards towards contraceptives use (r =0.88) and attitude towards sexuality in relation to the society (r = 0.74) were established. These were considered high enough for the study. The research questions  were answered using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation. Findings showed that attitude towards information on contraceptives use among secondary school girls was positive (2.86) and attitude towards information on sexuality in relation to the society among public secondary school girls was also positive (3.06). It was thus concluded that since the girls exhibited willingness and favoured  receiving information on contraceptives use and also on sexuality in relation to the society, all educational stake holders should put heads together and ensure commencement of sex education in all public secondary schools in Ebonyi State to address the broad sex education components comprising information on contraceptives use and sexuality in relation to the society. The study then recommended that Curriculum planners should incorporate sex education and pregnancy programs into the secondary school curriculum in order to give the girls useful information about pregnancy and contraceptives that would invariably grant them the freedom to discuss sexuality topics within the society thus preventing misconceptions and misinformation from peers.