Abstract:
The study investigated Guidance and Counselling service as a necessity for coping and educational accomplishment among other graduate students of the University of Benin city. In order to attain the objectives of the study, three research questions and two null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Descriptive survey research design was adopted by the study. The population of the study comprises of all students in the University of Benin, Benin City. The total number of students in the University campuses (Ugbowo & Ekenwan) is 77,000 students, both full time and part time degree programmes. The sample consisted of 250 students selected from 5 different faculties in the University of Benin, Ugbowo campus. These faculties were selected based on proximity to the researcher for easy administration of research instrument. Hence, the research instrument (Questionnaire) were administered to the 250 respondents within the University of Benin main campus.
The research instrument chosen for this research work is Questionnaire. The questionnaire was submitted to the researcher's supervisor and two other experts for review in order to validate the instrument. By checking the instrument's face and content validity, this was done to confirm its validity. To ensure the reliability of the instrument, a reliability test was carried out using 20 respondents who are not part of the sample, since they did not constitute part of the sample that will be utilized for this study. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient was be found to be 0.76. The data that were collected was used for analyses with regard to the research questions and hypotheses for the study using the statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 22). These methods include the descriptive method such as mean and standard deviation, while Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to test for the hypothesis. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 (5%) level of significance. Values < 0.05 were significant while ≥ 0.05 were not significant.
The study found that Male and Female students do not significantly differ in the utilization of guidance and counselling service of the University of Benin, there was significant relationship between male and female students on the challenges encountered in the utilization of guidance and counselling services in the University of Benin. Based on the findings, it was recommended amongst others: Basic counseling infrastructure should be provided commensurate to the faculty population size, adequate and consistence guidance and counseling services should be provided to the students to enhance their accessibility to these services to mention but a few.
