Knowledge of HIV/AIDS, its Sources and Behaviour Change of Undergraduate Students of Ekiti State University South West Nigeria: Implications for Counselling

Abstract

This research was embarked upon to find out about knowledge of HIV/AIDS, its sources and behaviour change of undergraduate university students of Ekiti State University, South west Nigeria: Implications for counselling. In order to carry out the investigation, the researcher formulated three research questions and one hypothesis to guide the investigation. The instrument used in the collection of data is “Knowledge of HIV/AIDS, its Sources and Behaviour Change Questionnaire” (KHASBCQ). The instrument that was made up of 26 items was subjected to a reliability test. The instrument was administered on 30 respondents who were not part of the main investigation. The test- retest was used to analyse the data collected from the 30 respondents. The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.87. The instrument, have language appropriateness and content validity. The investigator used 2 research assistants to administer 251 copies of the questionnaire on the respondents in the university. The research assistants retrieved 210 copies of the questionnaire from the respondents. The mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and the t- test was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed that the undergraduate university students have knowledge of HIV/AIDs. The sources of knowledge of HIV/AIDS by the students include: television, newspaper, friends and internet. The knowledge of HIV/AIDs by the students have led to behaviour change in them. There is behaviour change in the students because they no longer indulge in anal sex, they now have sex with only one partner, they make use of condom when having sexual intercourse. One of the recommendations is that both government and private radio networks are advised to educate the students and entire members of the society about the existence of HIV/AIDS so that they can have behaviour change such as having only one sexual partner.