Family Type, Mental and Physical Health of in-school Female Adolescents in Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria

This dataset is based on a cross-sectional survey conducted in Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria among in-school female adolescents. The general objective of the study was to examine the influence of family type on the physical and mental health of in-school female adolescents. The data were obtained in 2017 from in-school female adolescents aged 10-18 years old. The respondents were randomly selected from four purposively selected secondary schools. Two schools were selected from the government-owned public schools and two from schools owned by individuals or private organizations. Nigeria operates a six-year secondary education; three years at the junior secondary school  (JSS 1-3) and three years at the senior secondary (SS 1-3). The population for this study excluded students in SS3 because they had just concluded their terminal examination at the time of this study. Using the formula proposed by (Krejcie & Morgan, 1970) for deriving a small sample when the population is known, a sample size of 383 was derived from a population of 1656 female students in the four schools. With 10% added to adjust for non-response, a total of 421 students were involved in the study. The number of respondents allocated to each school was proportional to the size of the female students' population in each school. In each school, respondents were assigned to classes proportional to the size, and the particular respondents were identified using a random number. Data were collected with a self-administered structured questionnaire which was piloted before the actual survey. The data is saved in Stata format. 

A scale for measuring self-reported mental well was designed using questions adapted from Ross, Mirowsky, & Goldsteen (1990) and (Langton & Berger, 2011). The scale reliability coefficient was 0.85. The students were asked to state how often they experience 22 conditions such as feeling sad, discouraged, lonely, hopeless, worthless, wishing you were dead, having trouble concentrating, having difficulty sleeping, crying, and worried among others. 

Physical health was measured using a scale generated with questions adapted from (Langton & Berger, 2011; Ross et al., 1990).  The students were asked to state the frequency of experiencing seven conditions in the month before the survey: feeling sick, tired, dizzy, having chest pain, a headache, muscle or joint pain, and stomach ache. The response options were every day, more than two times, two times, once, and never, graded 1-5.

Family type was categorised in four ways: 1) two-parent and single parent. Two parents comprised of couples who were legally married and those who were living together in a consensual union whereas single parents comprised never married, widowed, divorced, and separated mother or father. 2) two-parent (monogamous), two-parent (polygynous), and single parent 3) two-parent, single father, and single mother 4) two-parent, never married, widowed, divorced, and separated