Comparing the knowledge and attitude about HIV/AIDS and the sexual behaviour of secondary school students of a missionary school and a public school.

BACKGROUND

A study of high school students attending a missionary school and a public school in Lagos was carried out to determine their knowledge and attitude about HIV/AIDS and to compare their sexual behaviour.

METHODS

Self administered questionnaires, were used for the respondents, selected by multistage sampling and a response rate of 98% was obtained. The average age of the population was 13.6 years. There was no significant difference in the knowledge of students from both schools about HIV/AIDS. 90% of all the respondents knew the exact meaning of HIV/AIDS. Most of the students got their information from the mass media (66%) and the school (57%). Only 5% and 0.3% of missionary and public school students respectively were informed by their parents.

RESULTS

There was no significant statistical association between the type of school and the occurrence of sexual intercourse. However, only 4% of sexually active missionary students used condoms compared to the 37% of the public school students. Condom usage was associated with the type of school (X2 = 1830; P-value = 0.0000189). There was also a statistically significant relationship between condom use and the age, sex and class of sexually active students (P-value = 0.00000006; 0.00000032; 0.00497073 respectively). 25% of the sexually public students had multiple sexual partners, compared to 2% for the missionary school students. There was a statistically significant relationship between the type of school and the number of sexual partners (X2 = 11.37; P-value = 0.003390).

CONCLUSION

The study recommends that age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education (including condom use) should be made available to students from both schools.