Knowledge and perception about asthma among students in a Nigerian single-sex secondary school

Introduction: Asthma is prevalent among children and adolescents. Few studies have assessed the knowledge and perceptions of asthma among adolescents. Objectives: This study assessed the knowledge and perception about asthma among secondary school students in an all-girls school in Nigeria. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a Nigerian secondary school in Enugu State (February 2020). In Senior Secondary School (SS1, SS2 and SS3), students could be in one of three specialized classes: Sciences, Humanities and Business. A self-administered structured questionnaire was filled by conveniently sampled students in SS1 and SS2. Inferential statistics utilized the Pearson's chi-square test and multiple linear regression with statistical significance set as P < 0.05. Results: Three hundred and eighty-eight (388) students participated in the study (mean age = 14.64 ± 0.93 years). Majority of the students were in Science class (n = 299; 77.1%). There was high awareness about asthma (n = 384; 99.0%). More than half of them had good asthma knowledge (n = 279; 71.9%); close to three-fifths had favourable perception of asthma (n = 222; 57.2%). More students in SS2 had good knowledge of asthma compared to those in SS1 (76.7% vs. 67.2%; ꭓ2 = 4.338; P = 0.037). More students in Science class had favourable perceptions about asthma compared with those in Humanities and Business class (60.5% vs. 48.1% vs. 25.0%; ꭓ2 = 7.458; P = 0.024). Conclusion: Majority of the students were aware about asthma and had good knowledge of the disease while close to three-fifths had favourable perceptions about asthma.