ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE OF PERSONAL HYGIENE AMONG PUBLIC JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN KADUNA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge and practice of personal hygiene among public junior
secondary school students in Kaduna State of Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The
population of the study comprised of two hundred and ninety-seven thousand one hundred and thirty-nine
(297,139) male and female public junior Secondary School Students and a sample size of 700 was used. The
respondents were drawn using multistage sampling procedure. A close ended researcher structured questionnaire
was used to obtain responses from the respondents. All copies of the questionnaire distributed were retrieved.
However, only 698 (99.5%) copies of the questionnaire were used as they were properly filled, while two
(1.5%) copies of the questionnaire were not used as they were not dully filled. With the aid of Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentages were used to describe
the demographic characteristics of the respondents. Means and standard deviation were used to answer the
research questions. Inferential statistics of one sample t-test was used to test the significance of knowledge and
practice of personal hygiene, while Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to test the
relationship between knowledge and practice of personal hygiene among junior secondary school at 0.05 alpha
level of significance. The findings showed that there was significant knowledge of personal hygiene among the
students (P-value=0.01), the results also showed that their practice of personal hygiene was not significant (P-
value=0.06). It was concluded that the students have knowledge of personal hygiene but their practice of
personal hygiene was poor. It was recommended that knowledge of personal hygiene should be maintained
through continuous health talks and further enlightens about the benefit of personal hygiene by the school
authorities and parents. Parents, school management and Ministry of Education should create means of
monitoring students’ practice of personal hygiene both in school and at home.