A STUDY OF FACTORS INFLUENCE ILLNESS BEHAVIOUR AMONG ESUT UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
*Mgbenkemdi E.H1 & Ekwo Jude. C2
Department of Psychology
Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Agbani, Nigeria
Email: iamejike@yahoo.co.uk
*corresponding author
ABSTRACT
The study was carried out to determine the factors influencing illness behaviour among ESUT undergraduate students. A total number of 107 participants comprising 57 females and 50 males between the age ranges of 18-27, mean age of 21.27 and standard deviation of 2.17 from the faculty of Education, Enugu state university of science and technology was used for the study. The sample was selected using simple random sampling technique. A 61 item questionnaire with a dichotomous response format of YES/NO designed to measure 8 factors of illness behaviour developed by Pilowsky & Spence (1983) was used for the study. The researcher made use of 3 factors out of the 8 factors on illness behaviour questionnaire (IBQ). Reason’s are for convenience, to control fatigue effect and memory effect, and most importantly, to ensure that the participants do not bias their responses on a given item. A survey design was used while Chi square was applied as a statistics to analyse the data. The findings revealed that Irritability as a factor yielded a significant outcome of 12.80 at p<.001 level of significance, General hypochondriasis as a factor did not yield a significant outcome of 0.11 at p<.001 level of significance, and Affective inhibition as a factor did not yield a significant outcome of 0.004 at p<.001 level of significance. The findings were discussed in relation to literature review and suggestions were made.
Keywords: Illness behaviour, factors, influence and undergraduate students.
