ABSTRACT

Background: A clean school environment not only engages students academically but also strongly related to a variety of positive health and behavioral outcomes. A university is an institution where a significant level of environmental cleanness should be observed. It is anticipated that surroundings such as student’s hostels, lecture halls, cafeterias, water chambers as well as offices should be kept clean due to the health implication attached to the practice. However, this practice cannot be achieved when the attitudes of the students lack positivity to support and safeguard the cleanness. Objective: As a starting point, the current study assesses the relationship between the student’s attitudes and the cleanness of the university environment. A developed and validated questionnaire was distributed to six hundred students in one of the university in Nigeria and their responses were collected. Results: Pearson correlation shows a positive linear relationship between the students attitudes and the cleanness of the surroundings, cleanness of the toilets, provision of dustbins, provision of solid wastes disposal facilities, misusing facilities, repairing damaged facilities and cleaning water chambers, r = 0.98, 0.97, 0.99, 0.97, 0.94, 0.98, 1.0 and 0.96 respectively. Nevertheless, an inverse relationship was observed between the student’s attitudes with cleaning rooms and adequate personnel, r = -0.94 and – 0.40. Conclusion: Student’s attitudes play a significant role in ensuring cleanness of our university’s environment irrespective of the number of personnel employ to handle such activity. Students should exhibit positive attitude towards environmental sanitation in order to ensure a clean environment in universities for a healthy school living.

Keywords: Cleanness, Health implication, Healthy school living, Student’s attitudes, University surroundings.

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