Abstract:
The study was designed to develop and validate adolescents’ youth–friendly reproductive health programme for adolescents in Enugu State. Eight specific objectives were formulated with eight research questions and four postulated hypotheses to guide the study. The research and development (R & D) design was used for the study. The population for the study was 1, 124, 842 adolescents and 6,200 health experts in Enugu State. Multi–Stage sampling procedure was employed to select 400 adolescents and 400 experts which formed sample for the study, using Taro Yamen formula for sample size. Three researcher designed instruments, Adolescents’ Reproductive Health Needs Assessment Questionnaire (ARHNAQ) Focus Group Discussion Guide (FGDG), and Adolescents’ Youth-Friendly Reproductive Health Programme Questionnaire (AYFRHPQ) were used for data collection. The instruments were validated by five experts, three from the Department of Health and Physical Education and two from Science Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Split–half method employing Cronbach Alpha statistic was used to establish the internal consistency of ARHNAQ and AYFRHPQ with reliability indices of .79 and .76 respectively. Means and Standard deviations were used in answering all the research questions. t–Test was used in testing Ho1and 3, while analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used in testing Ho2 and 4. The major findings of the study include eight reproductive health needs of adolescents. Both male and female adolescents of different levels of education indicated that the listed health needs and problems were their reproductive health needs and problems. There was no significant difference in the reproductive health needs of male and female adolescents for majority of the items. There was significant difference in the reproductive health needs of adolescents with primary, secondary and tertiary education regarding majority of the items. Scheffe’s test analysis indicated significant difference between tertiary and secondary education for the items. There was no significant difference in the reproductive health problems of adolescents based on gender. There was significant difference in the reproductive health problems of adolescents based on level of education. Scheffe’s test analysis indicated significant difference in the reproductive health problems of adolescents between secondary and tertiary education. Based on the findings, adolescents’ youth-friendly reproductive health programme (AYFRHP) was developed and validated for adolescents in Enugu State. Recommendations were made, among which include that State Ministries of Health and Education should try to adopt the adolescents’ youth-friendly reproductive health programme that was developed in the course of this study.
