Coping with sanitary hazards in hostels: The influence of student’s socioeconomic variability

Managing environmental hazards in any environment is imperative as they are harmful phenomena, objects, behaviours, conditions or human activities which may result in loss of life, injury and other health impacts. Therefore, this article assessed how students’ socioeconomic attributes affect their ability to cope with issues of sanitary hazards in tertiary public education institutions in Oyo State, Nigeria. The study evaluated such relationships using a perceptual approach whereby socioeconomic characteristics of students and their responses to sanitary hazards were captured. Data were obtained through a questionnaire survey which was administered to each of the selected 367 students residing on campus in three tertiary institutions using probability sampling procedures. Data obtained were analysed using frequency distribution and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Findings revealed that students’ coping ability had significant variation with socioeconomic variability such as age of student (F (3,363)= 4.090, p = 0.007*), ethnicity (F (3,363)= 3.381, p = 0.018*) and childhood environment (F (2,364)= 7.207, p = 0.010*). Of which the effect size measures of these attributes as presented by the Eta-squared statistic indicated that each attribute of these socioeconomic variability [age (0.033), ethnicity (0.027) and childhood environment (0.038)] accounted for a medium magnitude of students’ coping ability. The study, however, concludes that students are in need of environmental sanitation education to provide the required health knowledge and safety precautions to ensure sanitary environments within the institutions.