AWARENESS OF THE PREVENTIVE MEASURES OF PROSTATE CANCER AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS IN MBAITOLI L.GA, IMO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the awareness of the preventive measures for prostate cancer among secondary school teachers in Mbaitoli L.GA, Imo State, Nigeria. The study adopted a crosssectional survey design. The population comprised 500 secondary school teachers out of which 200 were randomly selected through a multi-stage sampling procedure. A structured questionnaire called the Awareness of Preventive Measures of Prostate Cancer Questionnaire (APMPCQ) was used as an instrument for data collection. Three juries are drawn from the Department of Health Education, Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, validated the instrument. The reliability co-efficient of 0.78 and 0.76 were obtained using the Cronbach Alpha Reliability coefficient on the primary and secondary preventive measures of prostate cancer awareness respectively. The data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency and percentage in answering the research questions and inferential statistics of chisquare were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance and appropriate degree of freedom. The findings revealed that more than half (56%) of the respondents were aware of the primary preventive measures for prostate cancer. The findings also revealed that more than half (53.5%) of the respondents are aware of the secondary preventive measures for prostate cancer. Based on the findings, nearly, half of the respondents were unaware of the primary (44%) and secondary (46.6%) preventive measures for prostate cancer. The findings also revealed that the respondents in the age group 40 to 49 years and those whose primary sources of information are television were aware of the preventive measures of prostate cancer more than their counterparts in the other age groups and of other sources. The findings further revealed that the awareness of preventive measures for prostate cancer does not vary by age and primary source of information. Based on the findings, the researchers recommended among others that; dissemination of information about prostate cancer and its preventive measures should be through multiple information sources using jingles, posters, radio, TV talks, and patient education by medical personnel in the general outpatient department.