Otiende, J.E.Mbola, Ruth M.2014-07-302014-07-302014-07-30http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/10748Hands are the primary mode of transmission of many infectious diseases particularly in the school set up. It has been demonstrated that appropriate hand washing can effectively cut down upper respiratory infection and diarrhoea rates among children. Even though the strategy has been found to be effective, there are factors which have been found to hinder its adherence in the school set up. The purpose of this study is to establish the factors influencing hand washing practices among pupils in primary schools in Central Division in Machakos County. The study will be guided by the following specific objectives:l) to establish the status of hand washing practices among pupils in primary schools, 2) to find out the availability of hand washing facilities and resources influences hand washing practices among pupils, 3) to determine the effect of awareness on the hand washing practices among pupils, 4) to assess the effect of family factors on hand washing practices among pupils and 5) to recommend on the ways of improving hand washing practices among pupils in primary schools in Kenya. Descriptive survey design will be used for the study. The study will be carried out in public primary schools in Central division in Machakos County. The target population for the study will be pupils, parents, teachers and head teachers. Simple random sampling technique will be used to sample pupils and teachers while purposive sampling technique will be used to sample head teachers and parents. Only parent representing standard six and standard seven students will be targeted by the study as they are perceived to be squinted with the information on how pupils fair on in school and at home. The study will be carried out in 6 primary schools which will be randomly sampled from the 60 primary schools in the division. A total of 186 respondents will be targeted by the study (this will constitute 144 pupils, 12 parents, 24 teachers and 6 head teachers). To sample pupils, the researcher will randomly sample between 6-12 from standard six and another 6-12 in standard seven in every school. Questionnaires, interview schedules, focused group discussions and observation checklist will be used as instruments for data collection. Piloting will be done to test on the validity and reliability of the study instruments. Primary data from the field will be edited and coded. Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics while content analysis techniques will be used to analyze qualitative data collected using interview schedules. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) package will be used to analyze the quantitative data. Descriptive statistics such as means, standard deviation, frequencies and percentages will be used to describe the data. The analyzed data will be presented in form of tables, pie-charts and bar-graphs where applicable.enThesis