Health Seeking Behaviours among Pregnant Women in Enugu East L.G.A., Enugu State.

Abstract

The study investigated the health seeking behaviours of pregnant women of different parities in Enugu East local government area, Enugu State, Nigeria. Three research questions were stated and three null hypotheses were equally formulated to guide the study. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. The population for the study was 1,660 registered pregnant women attending antenatal clinic in the 20 primary health centres. The sample size for this study was 166 respondents who were selected through the proportionate stratified random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was researchers-developed structured questionnaire which was validated by three experts. The instrument comprised 23 items divided in clusters based on the three research questions. Reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha statistic which yielded .81, .79 and .80 for clusters 1, 2 and 3 respectively. The instrument had an overall reliability index of .80 which indicated that the instrument was reliable. Data collected were coded into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software package version 23.0, which was used in processing all the relevant data. The research questions were answered descriptively using mean scores and standard deviation, while the hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at .05 level of significance. Findings of the study showed impressive health seeking behaviour among the sampled pregnant women in terms of attending antenatal visits, dedicating themselves in the practice of personal hygiene, as well as indulging in moderate exercises. Based on the findings of the study, the study recommended among others, the need for intensified health sensitization to be organized regularly for women of reproductive ages, in order to sustain their awareness and consciousness about the importance of antenatal visit.