IN SCHOOL FEMALE ADOLESCENTS ATTITUDE TOWARDS SEXUALITY EDUCATION IN EBONYI STATE, NIGERIA

The study investigated In-school female adolescents? attitude towards sexuality education in Ebonyi State. Descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population comprised 63,793 female students in Ebonyi State Secondary Schools. A multistage sampling procedure involving clustering, stratification and simple random sampling of balloting without replacement were used to select 1080 female Students, being approximately 1.69% of the population as sample for the study. Two research questions guided the study. Two null hypotheses were formulated and were tested using ANOVA at 0.5 level of significance. Instrument for data collection was a self-constructed Attitude towards Sex Education Questionnaire (ATSEQ), framed to reflect the contents of the research questions. In order to test the suitability and usability of the instrument, it was subjected to exploratory factor analysis in form of a principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation for data/scale reduction which reduced the items from 25 to 11 usable items. To estimate the internal consistency of the instrument, Cronbach Alpha?s Co- efficient was used and reliabilities r = 0.72 and r=0.78 respectively were established. The result of the study revealed that female students in Ebonyi state secondary schools showed positive attitude towards sex education. It was shown by the respondent?s positive attitude towards information on the sex education components used for the study. The result of the first null hypothesis was rejected as education class level of the female students had significant influence on their attitude towards sex education. Likewise, the result of the second null hypothesis was also rejected as religious affiliation of the female students had significant influence on their attitude towards sex education. The study concluded and recommended amongst others that by the positive attitude displayed by the respondents, there is urgent need for coherent sex education intervention in all the state secondary schools by the government at all levels and NGOs in order to promote the adoption of sexual health behaviours among the In-school female adolescents.