The knowledge of rural secondary school students on spectacle wear for correction of refractive errors: a south east Nigerian study

Background: Uncorrected refractive error, the second commonest cause of preventable blindness globally, places a heavy burden on individuals and the society. Spectacles remain the cheapest mode of its correction. Despite the affordability and accessibility of spectacles, the prevalence of uncorrected refractive error remains high due to low demand for spectacles when needed. This could be related to knowledge regarding spectacle wear. Objective: To assess the knowledge of rural secondary school students in Ebonyi State on spectacle wear for correction of refractive errors with a view to improving their utilization of spectacle wear for refractive error correction. Methods: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey of 11 randomly selected rural secondary schools in Ebonyi State, done from September, 2016 to December, 2016. The study instrument was a pretested, researcher-administered questionnaire with sub-fields on participant’s socio-demographics and knowledge of rural secondary school students towards spectacle wear for correction of refractive errors. The collected data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software for windows, version 22.0. Good knowledge of spectacle use was determined by proportion of students who correctly answered 50% of the questions. Descriptive statistics yield frequencies, percentages and proportions, analytical statistics utilized Chi-square or Fishers’ exact test for categorical variables, and student-t test for continuous variables. A p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: There were 453 participants comprising 192 (42.4%) males and 261 (57.6%) females (M: F = 1:1.4) aged 11 to 18 with a mean age of 14.6 ± 1.8 SD years. Most (60.3%; n=273) of the respondents had good knowledge of spectacle wear for refractive error correction. Predictors of good knowledge included being: male, (AOR=0.5; 95% CI = 0.317-0.780), p< 0.002, junior class (AOR=0.6 95% CI: 0.420-0.989), p <0.044, father being self-employed (AOR=1.8,95% CI: 1.173- 2.858), p< 0.008, mother being self-employed (AOR=0.4, 95% CI: 0.173-0.795), p< 0.011 and mothers being unemployed (AOR=0.3, 95% CI: 0.104-0.857), p< 0.025. Conclusion: Knowledge of spectacle wear for correction of refractive error was generally good. However most of the participants had poor knowledge of the use of eye glasses for correction of refractive errors.