ABSTRACT
This
study examined the social factors predisposing deviant behaviour as perceived
by secondary school students in Edo Central Senatorial district. The study was
especially undertaken to examine students’perception of peer influence, parental
influence and home influence as a social factors responsible for deviant
behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial district. The study also investigated the
influence of gender and school location on their perception of factors
predisposing deviant behaviour.
The descriptive design based on
survey method was adopted for the study. A questionnaire titled: Social Deviant
Questionnaire (SDQ) were administer to 319 students drawn from a population of 15,931
Senior Secondary School (SSS) students in the 70 secondary schools in Edo
Central Senatorial District. The test-rested reliability was used to determine
the reliability of the instrument which produced anr-value of 0.74. Mean (
) and standard deviation (S.D) was used
to analyse the research questions while the t-test statistical analysis was
used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level ofsignificance.
Result
from the analyses showed that the students have positive perception towards peer
influence, parental influence and home influence as a social factor
predisposing deviant behaviour in secondary school in Edo Central Senatorial
district. The test of hypotheses showed that gender and school location have a
significant influence on the students’ perception of social factors predisposing
deviant behaviour in the study area. It was recommended thatprincipals in
secondary schools should introduce some kind of reward system for students that
portray exemplary behaviour to reward and reinforce discipline behaviour among
learners.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTIONBackground to the Study
Social
factors are factors interacting with a person’s social environment that could
influence or induce positive or negative behaviour in a person at school, at
home or in a society. Douglas & Strauss (2007) noted that social factors
relates to factors influencing ones psycho-social development and how
interaction with one’s social environment influence how a person behaves. It
was first commonly used by psychologist Erik Erikson in his stages of social
development in the school and home to include: lack of proper interaction with
teachers and students; inefficient school administration; unqualified teachers;
large and oversized schools; overcrowded classrooms; disjointed family (of
students); peer pressure, domestic violence and parental influence or
inadequacies among others.
Peer
pressure, domestic violence and family/parental, influence been identified as
social factors by Erikson (1964). Therefore, the perception of students about them
will be the focus of this study. Peer, directly or indirectly influence
adolescents to indulge in risky behaviour. Direct peer pressure may occur in the
form of encouragement in anti-social or deviant activities like rape, theft,
substance abuse, among others. On the
other hand, “indirect peer influences can occur when youth associate with peers
who drink or smoke, take harmful drugs (Douglas &Strauss, 2007). Therefore,
it perhaps becomes problematic as children grow seeing their peers as role
model.
Family
or parental influences, has also been identified as a social factors. The place
of the family or parents as the first agent of a child’s socialization holds a
significant place in character formation of a child. From birth, a parent will
mold and shape behaviourssuitable to the norms of society through childrearing.
If parents act in a negative way, the child is more likely to follow their
parent’s negative attitude. They are also more likely to generalize this
attitude to the rest of the society. Thus, parents could have much influence
over their child’s behaviour.
Learning
acceptable behaviour is a part of socialization process of a child at home.
Osarenren,Nwadinigwe and Anyama (2013) noted that the negative aspect of family
life is the effect of home conflict or domestic violence on children. From in
frequent slaps, pushes, grabs, or shoves to frequent and severe
life-threatening assaults, domestic violence in its various forms could affect
a child’s upbringing and social consequences. Domestic violence between parents
and children, children and their siblings, children and their loved ones at
home could influence how they behave to others and their perception about
things. Hence, children could be severely traumatized by witnessing domestic
violence or being victims of the conflict themselves.
Children
and youths are very valuable human resource because they ensure the continuity
of any society. Deviant behaviour is also common among them (youths) especially
in their formative years when character is formed to suit the expectation of
the family and the society. Deviance is behaving contrary to acceptable norms
and expectation of a society. Every society has specific behaviour standards
and ways in which people are supposed to act. Sometimes these are the paradigms
for predictable behaviour in the society. It can be described as a violation of
culturally acceptable norm or a failure to conform to set rules and ways of
doing something that is traditionally prescribed.
A
behaviour considered as deviant in one society may be seen as non-deviant in
another society. For example, the traditional African social custom appreciates
chastity, modest dressing, good morals, decent behaviour, and respect for
elders, handwork and integrity and frowns at premarital and extra marital
sexual relationship. It also prohibits marriage between same sex such as
homosexuality and consanguine sexual relationship. The Nigerian society frowns
at alternative marriage styles and parenthood, for example, single parenthood
and cohabitation. In some other societies, these unacceptable behavioursmay be
acceptable. That is why; deviance is relative to time and place.
Deviant
behaviour in a society are not limited to what goes on within the school system
alone. Factors beyond the fence of the schools such as family background,
socio-economic status of the child, imported culture, role models in the
community, peer influence are some of the causes (Dalhatua&Yunusa, 2013).
Teachers are sometimes blamed for being incompetent in teaching children the
right morals in class. This could be wrong since teachers are not the only
influencing factors inside the school and therefore cannot be blamed wholly.
Also, inclining educational problem on educators could be incorrect as no
general agreement has been reached as to one single cause of deviance in
today’s society.
Deviant
behaviours include but are not limited to: truancy, anti–social behaviour,
disrespect for constituted authority, sexual harassment, rape, arson,
destruction, delinquency that are portrayed by children and adolescent. Adesoji
(2010) attributed this menace to peer pressure. He noted that youths break away
from their families and try out different roles and situations to figure out
who they are and where they fit into the world. Hence, they spend more time
with their friends and less time with their families. This is a normal, healthy
stage of development, but the growing distance between parents and their
children and the increasing importance of friends can be a source of conflict
and anger within the family.
The
desire to impress friends and be accepted by peers is one of the strongest
forces in adolescents that leads teenagers to do things that they know are
wrong, dangerous, or risky. This is what Adesoji (2010) described as “peer
pressure”. According to Him, peer pressure is the influence exerted by a peer
group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or
behaviours to conform to the group. On the positive side, the pressure to keep
up with the peer group can also inspire teens to achieve goals that they might
never aim for on their own. This explains why most young people prefer to be in
the company of their peers, who offer mutual support in contrast to their
parents, who they perceive as authoritarian.
It
is the zeal of every reasonable parent to address the changing behaviour of
their children. However, high increase in juvenile delinquencies, high rate of
early school dropouts, increase in street children and high rate of crime, both
in towns and communities, could be linked to poor parental guidance in the
early child development (Melgosa, 2002). He asserted that majority of the
children involved in deviant behaviour, are either staying alone, staying far
from their parents, with their peers or were brought up in a violence
environment. Most of them also opt to engage in detrimental lifestyles of
drugs, alcoholism, and sexual crimes. This explains why alcoholic parents,
parents with criminal behaviour and parents with discipline systems which are
strict, too lax or inconsistent, broken homes or those with problematic
relationships; also tend to influence delinquent behaviour in children.
The
home or family also may contribute to deviant behaviour both at childhood and
adulthood (Hagan & Foster, 2001). An intact family can be said to be a
functioning union between a mother and a father, so when a break up exist, the
turmoil may affect a child to a greater extent. A functioning family is
beneficial to a child than a dysfunctional one. Family separation could result
in child neglect which generally could lead to a child’s deviant behaviour like
leaving home, hooliganisms, stealing, drug addiction and alcoholism among
others. If a person is brought up in a violence prone environment, his/her
emotions could be influenced negatively to engage in deviant activities or
indiscipline behaviour.
The
issue of deviant behaviour among students in Nigeria has become worrisome in
recent times. It is observed that many students are found to disobey school
rules and regulations, engage in drug abuse, truancy, raping, pilfering,
abortion and having unlawful association. Some of these students are sexually
precocious, indolent and disobedient to parents, destroys public properties in a protest. In the process
of being deviant, many children of school age dropped out of the school only to
become hoodlums and miscreants in the society. Another worrisome situation is
the neglect of parents’ roles by so called ‘working parents’.
Many
parents nowadays have left their responsibilities to school teachers.
Observation has shown that one of the reasons usually given for the neglect of
parental roles is that many parents give much priority to their occupation at
the expense of their children; hence, they are left to the care of teachers.
Since students often experience different people with different types of
behaviour in their daily lives; they therefore tend to display different
characters in different situations. Sometimes they are excited, happy,
aggressive, sad or in a deviant mood. Consequently, there are alleged cases of
teachers being threatened by students in the course of discharging their lawful
duties in secondary schools around Edo State. In some cases, the attacks have
been violent. In the midst of these problems, Nakpodia (2010) noted that there
is a growing debate over the declining standard of education due to incessant
student unrest and the attendant blame on teachers.
Furthermore,
there are instances whereby students assault their teachers with weapons, use
abusive and offensive language on their teachers, threaten or intimidate their
teachers with positions of their ‘highly placed’ parents. The problem now is
rather alarming and jeopardizing the administration of most schools. Adesoji
(2010) tried to identify factors predisposing deviance when he argued that
affiliation with deviant peers predicts deviant behaviour more strongly than community,
school, or family characteristics. Hagan & Foster, (2001) asserted that
parental influence or the family contributes to deviant behaviour both at
childhood and adulthood while Osarenren et al (2013) found that deviant
behaviour is traceable to domestic violence.
In
Edo State, a knowledge gap exists on the social factors responsible for deviant
behaviour from students’ perspective. Hence, the problem of this study is to
determine the social factors predisposing deviant behaviour as perceived by secondary
school students in Edo Central Senatorial district.
This study examines the social factors
predisposing deviant behaviour as perceived by secondary school students in
Central Senatorial district of Edo State. Specifically, the study
1) examinestudents’
perception of peer influence as a social factor responsible for deviant
behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial
district .
2) find
out students’ perception of family/parental influence as a social factor
responsible for deviant behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial district .
3) determine
students’ perception of home/domestic violence as a social factor responsible
for deviant behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial district.
4) determine
whether male and female secondary school students’ perception differ on the
social factor responsible for deviant behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial district.
5) determine
whether students’ perception of the social factors responsible for deviant
behaviour differ by school location in Edo Central Senatorial district.
The following research questions were
raised to guide the study:
1)
What are students’ perceptions of peer
influence as a social factor responsible for deviant behaviour in Edo Central
Senatorial district?
2)
What are students’ perceptions of parental
influence as a social factor responsible for deviant behaviour in Edo Central
Senatorial district?
3)
What are students’ perceptions of home
influence as a social factor responsible for deviant behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial
district?
4)
Do male and female secondary school
students differ of their perception on social factors responsible for deviant
behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial district?
5)
Do urban and rural secondary school
students differ of their perception on social factors responsible for deviant
behaviour in Edo Central Senatorial districts?
The
research hypotheses were formulated for the study:
1) There
is no significant difference between male and female secondary school students
on their perception of the social factors responsible for deviant behaviour in
Edo Central Senatorial district.
2) There
is no significant difference between urban and rural secondary school students
on their perception of the social factors responsible for deviant behaviour in
Edo Central Senatorial district.
This study helps to unveil to parents,
school administrators,school counsellors, teachers, and prospective researchers
the social factors for deviant behaviour among secondary school students’
perspective in Edo Central Senatorial District. The study wasof benefit in the
following ways:
To parents, the findings will help parents
to know the influence of domestic violence in contributing towards deviant
behaviour among students. Findings will also help parents to determine the
influence of domestic violence on deviant behaviour among students.
The study helps school
administrators to know the social factors responsible for deviance behaviour among
students in the school system. Therefore, findings will help them to determine
whether peer pressure is a factor predisposing deviant behaviour among students
in secondary schools.
Findings would help school
counsellors to determine the social factors responsible for deviance behaviour
among students in Esan Central Senatorial District as perceived by students
themselves. Therefore, finding out thesocial factors responsible for deviance behaviour
among students would help schoolcounsellors to ascertain whether referral,
counselling, orientation, or consultancy among others is what will be
appropriate for addressing deviance among youths in the area of study.
Findings would be of benefit to
teachersin that result would show them the influence of parental and home
influence on students’ deviance behaviour at school. Specifically, recommendations from this study
would help teachers to ascertain their roles as ‘loco parents’ in resolving
such influences on students’ deviance behaviour.
Lastly, the findings from the study
contribute to knowledge and provoke further researches on this area that will
lead to the production of more empirical data. Thus, this would be of benefit
to prospective researchers who could consider undertaking further studies on
the topic the future.
This
study examined the social factors predisposing deviant behaviour as perceived
by secondary school students in Edo Central Senatorial district. The study
covered all the senior secondary schools students (SSS) in public schools in
the area of study. The social factors of focus in this study include: peer,
parental and home influence. The study also investigated the influence of
gender and school location on students’ perception of the
aforementioned social factors that could be responsible for deviant behaviour
in the area of study.
The following terms were operationally
defined for the study:
Social
factors: This refers to those factors interacting with a
person’s social environment that could influence or induce positive or negative
behaviour among students at school, home or in the society. In this study this
factors include: peer influence, parental influence and home/domestic violence
Deviance:
Deviance is behaving contrary to acceptable norms and expectation of a society.
Peer
pressure: This describes the influence exerted by a peer
group to make individuals to change their attitudes, values, behaviour in order
to conform to group norms.
Home
influence: This refers to all forms of frequent slaps, pushes,
grabs, or shoves and severe life-threatening assaults witnessed by children (or
the ones they are directly involved in), in a domestic environment that could
affect a child’s upbringing and emotions.
School
location: This refers to the area a school is built.
Rural
schools: This refers to secondary schools located in the
outskirt or outside the local government headquarters.
Urban
schools: This refers to secondary schools located in the
local government headquarters.
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