Demographic Factors Influencing Sexual Abuse Among Secondary School Adolescents In Rivers State, Nigeria: Implications For Counselling.

Dr (Mrs) Ijeoma Ernest-Ehibudu

Abstract


This study investigated demographic factors influencing sexual abuse among secondary school adolescents in Rivers State, Nigeria with a view of establishing implications for counselling. Two research questions and three 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 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 adopted 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 rural and urban areas were involved in sexual abuse as well those from Christian and Islamic religions. However, adolescents from urban and Christian religion were more  sexually abused than. Among the recommendations made were that Pastors and Imams who are the spiritual leaders in faith-based religious organizations should modify their messages to include topics on sexual abuse. They should stand as crusaders and ensure that their members model good behaviours. Again, churches and mosques should organize talks and seminars to enlighten adolescents on the new trends of sexual abuse. Furthermore, government should hasten up to implement the bill on harassment and sexual abuse so that the offenders can be subjected to the full weight of the law.


Keywords


Contact sexual abuse non-contact sexual abuse, location, religion.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.52155/ijpsat.v25.2.2935

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