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Ijeoma Ernest-Ehibudu, University of Port Harcourt, NigeriaBetty-Ruth Iruloh, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Abstract
This study investigated sociological factors influencing sexual abuse among secondary school adolescents in Rivers State, Nigeria with a view of establishing implications for counselling. Two research questions and four hypotheses were answered and tested respectively. The study adopted ex-post facto design. As at the time of the study, the marginal estimate of the population of adolescents in Rivers State was about 1,587,864. The sample of the study comprised 1,000 adolescents. The study adopted multi-stage sampling procedure firstly, to select 10 Local Government Areas out of the 23 Local Government Areas in Rivers State, Nigeria. The instrument for the study is Contact and Non-contact Sexual Abuse Inventory (CNSAI). This is a non-cognitive instrument which was adapted from Finkelhor’s Sexual Abuse Scale (SAS) and Odemelam’s Students’ Sexual Behaviour Inventory (SSBI). The instrument was validated by three experts and the reliability was established using Cronbach Alpha method. CNSAI had reliability coefficient of 0.71. Mean and Standard deviation were used in answering the research questions while 2-way ANOVA was used to test the hypotheses. The study established that adolescents from both low and high socio-economic status were involved in sexual abuse as well as those in their early and late adolescence. However, adolescents from low socio-economic status are more at risk as well as those in their early adolescence. Among the recommendations made were that the government should make provision for stipends to indigent adolescents to assist them in taking care of their personal needs. Again, parents should start early to introduce sexuality education as well as discuss the menace of sexual abuse with their children. Furthermore, government should hasten court proceedings involving sexual abuse so that the offenders can be promptly subjected to the full weight of the law.
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Conference: ECE2025Stream: Counselling
This paper is part of the ECE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Ernest-Ehibudu I., & Iruloh B. (2025) Sociological Factors Influencing Sexual Abuse Among Secondary School Adolescents in Rivers State, Nigeria: Implications for Counselling ISSN: 2188-1162 The European Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 455-466) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2025.37
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2025.37
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