Impact of Broken Home on Students’ Behaviours in Secondary Schools in Enugu State

Abstract

The study investigated the impact of broken homes on students’ behaviours in secondary schools in Enugu State. It specifically sought to examine the impact of broken homes on the cognitive domain, Affective domain, Psychomotor domain and Emotional stability of secondary school students with respect to gender. Four research questions and Four null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The study was conducted in Enugu State. The population for the study was all the 112,481 secondary school students in the 397 public secondary schools in Enugu State made up of 37,493 male and 74,988 female .Proportionate Stratified Sampling Technique was used for this study .The instrument for data collection was a self constructed questionnaire (developed by the researcher) called impact of broken homes on students behaviours in secondary schools in Enugu State Questionnaire ( IBSBSESQ).The instrument for data collection were subjected to face validation by three experts : one from maths and computer education and two others from Guidance and Counselling Department, all in Enugu State university of science and technology, ESUT, Enugu. Cronbach Alpha reliability estimate was used to ascertain the internal consistency of the entire instrument which is 0.77. Data collected for this study were used to analyze the four research questions using mean, grand mean and standard deviation, the hypotheses were tested using t-test statistics. The results obtained from the findings indicated that broken homes affect the cognitive domain, Affective domain, Psychomotor domain and Emotional Stability of secondary school students with respect to gender in Enugu State to a great extent. The study revealed also that there is no significant difference in the mean response scores of the extent to which broken homes affect the cognitive domain, Affective domain, Psychomotor domain and Emotional Stability of secondary school students with respect to gender in Enugu State. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended, among others that Parents-teachers association (PTA) should be strengthened in schools, and there should be regular meetings for counseling parents on the need for tolerance, accommodation, appreciation and understanding of each other in their respective matrimonial homes for the sake of good upbringing of their children.