CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC SENSITIVITY IN HYPERTENSION PREVENTION MESSAGING IN SOUTHWEST NIGERIA
Keywords:
Hypertension, message, culture, language, beliefs and mass mediaAbstract
The study examined cultural and linguistic sensitivity in hypertension prevention messaging in Southwest Nigeria with specific objectives on the cultural health beliefs and language of communication on hypertension messaging. A quantitative survey research design, using a structured questionnaire was implored to elicit data from 375 respondents who were purposively selected from Lagos, Osun and Ekiti States in Nigeria. The descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-test were used to analyse the data in SPSS version 20. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the respondents with traditional and contemporary health beliefs on their responses to the hypertension prevention messages (t(373) =1.146, p=.144) and thus H01 was retained. The hypertension awareness of the respondents exposed to health messages in indigenous languages however was significantly higher than those exposed to health messages in English (t(373) = 5.870, p< .001), leading to reject H02.The findings show that the traditional health beliefs do not appear to play a significant role in the response to the hypertension prevention messages, while language plays a pivotal role in hypertension prevention communication. Therefore, culturally and linguistically appropriate communication has a significant impact on the message comprehension and awareness. It recommends the use of indigenous languages, local idioms, culturally relevant examples, and strategies to enhance effective hypertension prevention messaging in Southwest Nigeria.
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