Socio-demographic Determinants of Healthcare Utilization among Adults in Rural Communities of Benue State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the determinants of HealthCare Utilization among Adults in Rural Communities in Benue State. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Population for the study consisted of 4,253,641 adults in rural communities in Benue State. A sample size of 612 adults was selected by a multistage sampling procedure. The instrument for data collection was a self-structure questionnaire with reliability coefficients of 0.82. Data analysis was done using the statistical package for social sciences. Percentage and Mean (x) sores were used in analyzing the demographic variables and research questions, while Spearman rank order was used in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that socio-demographic variables such as age, educational level, marital status and location had no significant difference in the utilization of health services (\(\bar{X}\)>2.50) while religion have significant difference (\(\bar{X}\)<2.50) in the utilization of health care service in the study area. It was concluded that sociodemographic variables have influence utilization of health care services among adult was high. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that, Government need to improve on accessibility to health care facilities by building additional health care facilities where distance will be closer to the people.