Relationship between HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT) Awareness and HCT Uptake among Young People in Nigeria: Implications for Social Change

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between HIV counselling and testing (HCT) awareness and HCT uptake among young people in Nigeria and their implications for social change. The study is a quantitative research guided by one research question and one hypothesis. The target population comprised young people in Nigeria ages 15 to 24 years because the focus of this study was to identify the factors affecting HCT uptake among young people in this age cohort. The representative sample was obtained from the updated master sample frame of rural and urban zones developed by the National Population Commission in Nigeria. This master sample frame was a national survey that comprised all 36 states in Nigeria. Probability sampling technique was used to obtain a sample of 10,091 respondents (ages 15 to 24 years) for the study. The multistage cluster sampling was used to select suitable young people with known probability. Data were collected throughout Nigeria between September and December 2012 from 32,543 households (rural = 22,192; urban = 10,351) using structured and semi-structured questionnaires. The individual questionnaires asked about household characteristics, background characteristics of the respondents. Data were analyzed by inputting them into SPSS v21.0 for analysis and then coded them for each participant. The data were summed using descriptive statistics. Frequencies and percentages; measures of central tendencies were used to answer the research question while nonparametric tests such as chi-square were used to analyze non-normally distributed data at 0.5 level of significance. The results of the chi-square test of association between HCT awareness and HCT uptake showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between HCT awareness and HCT uptake among young people ages 15 to 24 years in Nigeria, X 2 (1, n = 8916) = 306.66, p < 0.001. In other words, knowledge of the availability of HCT services may have influenced the possibility that the participants would use them. Among others, it was recommended that government should examine the efficacy of HCT treatments in Nigeria, along with conducting a demographic analysis of the at-risk population.