Impact of Self-Instructional Therapy on Adolescents’ Truancy in Secondary Schools in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of self-instructional therapy in managing adolescents with truancy in secondary school students in Oredo local government area of Edo State using parental socioeconomic status as an intervening variable. To guide the study, three research questions were raised and formulated into two hypotheses which were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent control group and quasi experimental design. The population of the study was thirteen thousand and fifty-one (13,051) senior secondary school students from the fourteen (14) public secondary schools in Oredo local government area of Edo State. A sample size of two hundred (200) students made up of one hundred males and one hundred females were selected using balloting without replacement. The research instrument Students Level of Truancy Questionnaire (SLTQ) was used and a reliability coefficient of 0.64 was obtained using the Cronbach Alpha method. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation and t-test. The results revealed that students exposed to self - instructional therapy had a higher truancy mean score than those in the control group at posttest, students in the experimental group had a higher posttest truancy score than their pretest and parental socioeconomic status has no significant interaction on the truancy level among secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State. Based on the findings, it was therefore recommended among others, that counselling psychologists should train and retrain students to help them reduce truancy irrespective of their parental socioeconomic status, using self–instructional therapy.