Help-seeking intentions in university adolescent students from Peru
Description
The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of formal help-seeking intentions among Peruvian adolescent university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru, and to identify its associated factors. We conducted an analytical cross-sectional study in adolescent university students aged 18-21 years old who were enrolled at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM). The participants were selected from each of the five blocks of university careers to obtain a representative sample. Within each block, a second selection was made for the career with the highest number of students enrolled: Medicine, Biology, Industrial Engineering, Accounting, and Law, respectively. A total of 316 participants were included through a non-probabilistic sampling proportional to the number of individuals in each block. We collected the list of registered university students and their institutional e-mail addresses after requesting them from the academic department of each of the faculties. Students were contacted by e-mail between March and August 2021. After receiving the information and purpose of the study, the questionnaires to be applied, the benefits, harms, and rights of the participants, those students who provided informed consent were included. Students answered the surveys through a Google form, which was encoded in Microsoft Excel 365 to preserve the anonymity of the respondents. The dependent variable of the study was the formal help-seeking intentions, which were obtained through the General Help-Seeking Questionnaire Vignette Version (GHSQ-V). In addition, we evaluated the history of the need to seek help in the last five years ("Have you perceived the need to seek help in the last five years?") and formal help-seeking behavior ("Have you sought help from a psychologist, physician or psychiatrist in the last five years?"). On the other hand, we measured the degree of family cohesion through the cohesion subscale of the Family Environment Scale (FES).. Finally, sociodemographic variables were collected, such as sex, age, marital status, university career, job, having repeated a course, having a house, having children, monthly income, and the educational level of the father and mother.
Files
Steps to reproduce
We conducted an analytical cross-sectional study in adolescent university students aged 18-21 years old who were enrolled at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM). The participants were selected from each of the five blocks of university careers to obtain a representative sample. Within each block, a second selection was made for the career with the highest number of students enrolled: Medicine, Biology, Industrial Engineering, Accounting, and Law, respectively. A total of 316 participants were included through a non-probabilistic sampling proportional to the number of individuals in each block. We collected the list of registered university students and their institutional e-mail addresses after requesting them from the academic department of each of the faculties. Students were contacted by e-mail between March and August 2021. After receiving the information and purpose of the study, the questionnaires to be applied, the benefits, harms, and rights of the participants, those students who provided informed consent were included. Students answered the surveys through a Google form, which was encoded in Microsoft Excel 365 to preserve the anonymity of the respondents.