Knowledge, Attitudes and Self–Efficacy of Child Sexual Abuse Prevention among Teachers in Selected Secondary Schools in Abeokuta South Local Government, Ogun State

Abstract

Sexual violence against children is a gross violation of children's rights and as well an undeniable global reality across all countries. This social ill occurs in various forms including rape, sexual assault, child sexual abuse etc. The objective of the study is to assess the level of knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy of secondary school teachers on child sexual abuse prevention. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used and a Convenience sampling technique was adopted for the study. A structured self-administered questionnaire was used. A sample of 164 teachers was administered questionnaires. The frequency table was used to find the percentages and descriptive statistics of the data, and also Chi-Square cross-tabulation was used to analyse the hypotheses with the aid of Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS) version 21.0 The findings revealed that 159 (97%) of the teachers have a good knowledge of child sexual abuse and 5 (3.0%) have poor knowledge of child sexual abuse prevention, 98 (59.8%) have positive attitude towards preventing child sexual abuse while 66 (40.2%) have negative attitude. 94 (57.3%) of the respondents have a high self-efficacy in child abuse prevention while 70 (42.7%) have low self-efficacy in child sexual abuse prevention. The results of this study showed that teacher's attitudes about child sexual abuse prevention are significantly related to self-efficacy in preventing sexual abuse but knowledge showed an insignificant relation to self-efficacy. It is recommended that teachers with poor knowledge of child sexual abuse should be trained on how to prevent the children from sexual abuse in the society which will enhance their knowledge