Knowledge, Practices and Views of Ghanaian Students with Visual Impairment about Hiv/Aids

Abstract The study was designed to explore the general knowledge, practices and views of students with visual impairment about HIV/AIDS in order to identify the gaps in students’ knowledge and inform decisions on instructional strategies and materials to improve students’ knowledge. Specifically, the study examined the nature of knowledge students with visual impairment have about HIV/AIDS; described the practices and views of such students about individuals living with HIV/AIDS. The study adopted the descriptive cross-sectional survey design, and used multi-staged stratified, and purposive sampling techniques to select 83 students with visual impairment in two Junior High Schools in Ghana. The participants completed a questionnaire and the researchers adopted descriptive and inferential statistics including frequency distribution, percentages, and chi-square (X2) test, to analyze the data. The findings were that majority of students with visual impairments held correct notion about HIV/AIDS; although, majority of the students understood the mode of transmission of the disease, a significant number of them held misconceptions about the modes of transmission. For example, some of them felt HIV/AIDS can be transmitted through body contact, coughing and sneezing, sharing lavatories and casual kissing as well as blood donation. In terms of views about persons living with HIV/AIDS, there were no variations in the students’ opinions. Furthermore, knowledge about HIV/AIDS has positively influenced the sexual behaviour of majority of students in the study. Chi-square (X2) computation at 0.05 significant level revealed no variations in students’ responses according to sex. Recommendations were suggested to the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service and other organizations for consideration.