Dataset for Vaginal Human Papillomavirus infection among adolescent and early adult girls in Jos, Nigeria

Objectives: To assess risk factors for HPV infection, determine knowledge about HPV vaccines, assess willingness to receive the HPV vaccine among adolescent and early adult girls in Nigeria, we administered a structured questionnaire. We also collected samples to determine the prevalence and patterns of HPV infections. Data description: The dataset contains the responses of 205 participants from 10 randomly selected public and private secondary schools in Jos, Nigeria. The data includes information on risk factors for HPV infections such as sexual behaviours, knowledge about HPV vaccine and willingness to receive the vaccine. This is valuable information that can be compared to data from studies in other environments or to determine changes in the pattern of risk factors and HPV prevalence in this population over time.


Background
Persistent high risk Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a necessary cause of cervical cancer [1].HPV infections are very common and usually transient.The rst episode typically occurs shortly after sexual debut in adolescence and early adulthood [2,3].Several factors contribute to the risk of HPV infections.These include risky sexual behaviours, sexual hygiene, and substance abuse [4,5][6].Although vaccines are available for the prevention of HPV infection, these are not yet readily or widely available in Nigeria.Hence the need to establish current prevalence, pattern, and risk factors for HPV infection young girls in this population.
We collected data from 205 adolescent and early adult girls.Details of the enrolment process in the study has been published elsewhere [7].After enrolment, and obtaining informed consent and assent, research nurses from the Jos University Teaching Hospital (Nigeria) interviewed each participant in private using a structured questionnaire.Young nurses were used to encourage the girls to relax and be more open to participating in this study, particularly in discussions related to sexual matters.
The study questionnaire included questions on socioeconomic and family characteristics, sexual preferences, sexual debut, condom use, sexual behaviour including masturbation, menstrual, and personal hygiene practices.
We also collected data on knowledge related to HPV infections and HPV vaccine, and willingness to receive the vaccine.The questionnaire design was guided by the research questions and literature review [8][9][10].We pretested the questionnaire in 10 people to check for correctness and ease of administration.The participants were trained to self-collect vaginal samples which were tested for HPV infection using DEIA/LIPA 25 .This dataset will contribute immensely to comparisons of HPV infection among other population in Nigeria and other countries.Researchers involved in data mining and analysis of secondary data will also nd the dataset useful.

Data Description
The dataset (data le 1 on 1) [11] contains to 205 questionnaires from adolescent and early adult girls.Because some of the girls were minors and unable to give consent in their own cognizance, we obtained consent and assent as required [7].The girls were enrolled from 10 randomly selected schools in Jos, Nigeria after meeting the inclusion criteria of being within the age range and haven provided informed consent and/or ascent.Some 50.7% (104/205) of the participants were recruited from public schools while 49.3% (101/205) were from private schools.The mean age (SD) of the girls was 14.7 (1.97) years with a minimum of 9 and maximum age of 20 years old.Most of the girls (145/205, 70.7%) had attained menarche and the earliest age at menarche was 9 years.Instead of socio-economic status, we used principal component analysis (PCA) to compute wealth index using data on ownership of household items and availability of household facilities such as type of house they live in, type of toilet facilities, main source of cooking fuel etc [12].
To assess the sexual risk factors for HPV infections, we collected data on the sexual history of the girls.Only 9.3% (19/186) of the girls reported history of penetrative vaginal sexual intercourse.Most of the girls (57.9%, 11/19) who reported sexual intercourse rst experienced it at 15 years of age or less and 15.8% (3/19) experienced it before the age of 10 years.We also