Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice of Prostate Cancer Screening among Non-Teaching Staff of the University of Benin, Edo State

Abstract

Prostate cancer continues to be a serious public health problem as well a threat to the health of man. This study examined the knowledge attitude and practice of prostate cancer screening among male non-teaching staff of the university of Benin. The researcher adopted the descriptive survey research design and the population for this study was 3235. The multi-stage sampling technique was used and the sample size for this study was 228 respondents. The research instrument was a self-structured questionnaire with two sections. The questionnaire was validated by the three experts in the field of Health, Safety and Environmental Education. In order to establish the internal consistency of the items, the questionnaire was administered once to twenty (20) non-teaching staff who were not part of the study and thereafter Cronbach Statistical tool was used to analyze the data collected. It yielded an alpha value of 0.76 which warranted the use of the instrument. The data were analyzed with the use of frequency counts, percentages, mean and standard deviation. From the findings,76% of the respondents had high levels of knowledge of prostate cancer screening, with a high mean value of 3.82, respondents had positive attitudes towards prostate cancer screening and their practice of prostate cancer screening was poor. As a result of the findings of the study, The researcher recommends that there should be a sensitization campaign on non-teaching staff of the university of Benin to encourage them to use the screening service for prostate cancer to prevent the disease.