ABSTRACT
Education is the most important aspect of human development, and to this end the study investigated socio-cultural factors as determinants of parents'/guardians' disposition towards girl-child education amongst female students in public tertiary institutions in Delta state. Six research questions were raised and six hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha level.
The survey design using the descriptive survey and the correlational approach was adopted for the study. One dependent variable; parents’/guardians’ disposition towards girl-child education and the independent variable socio-cultural factors (family type, family size, socio-economic status and geographical location of family’s residence) were used in the study. The population of this study consisted of ten thousand five hundred and thirty-six (10,536) female students from three (3) public tertiary institutions in Delta State. The sample size of the study consisted of 250 female students in tertiary institutions in Delta State. The multistage sampling technique was adopted for this study. Stage 1: Three public tertiary institutions in Delta State were purposively selected by the researcher for the study. The tertiary institutions include one university, one polytechnic and one college of education. Stage 2: Four faculties in the university were purposively selected by the researcher including physical sciences, life sciences, arts and education from which four departments were randomly selected and questionnaires administered. The same process was applied in both the polytechnic and the college of education. The instrument used for the study was questionnaire titled "Family Types, Family size and Socioeconomic Status Questionnaire" (FTFTSSQ) adapted from Ofuani (2013). The questionnaire consists of three sections, A, B and C. Section A is made up of four (4) items to obtain information on the respondent’s sponsor as well as the family type and family size. Section B is made up of five (5) items to obtain relevant data on the socioeconomic background of the respondent while section C contains 24 items structured on a Likert scale, with reliability coefficient of .88.The six (6) research questions raised to guide the study were all hypothesized and analysed. Hypothesis one was analysed using simple percentage, Hypotheses 2 to 5 were analysed using Point-biserial correlation statistics while linear regression was used to analyse hypothesis 6.
The results indicated that family type does significantly relate to parents’/guardians’ disposition towards the girl- child education in tertiary institutions in Delta State. However, family size, Geographical Location, Socio- economic status and the interactions of family type, family size, Geographical location and socio- economic status did not significantly predict parents’/guardians’ disposition towards the girl- child education in tertiary institutions in Delta State.Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that the Federal, State Government, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Mass Media and Churches, should intensify awareness creation through talks, seminars/workshops, film-shows and preaching on the need to abolish all practices and beliefs that impede the education of women and general development.
