Analysis of School Climate on Physical Safety, Emotional Stability, Sexual Harassment and Quality of Life among Students in University of Benin, Benin City

Abstract

School climate defines the personality and the expectations of a school. However research on school climate has majorly been limited to academic performance. The thrust of this study was to investigate school climate on the physical safety, emotional stability, sexual harassment and the general quality of life of students in University of Benin. The worrisome geometric increase of negative outcomes such as violence, prostitution, sexual harassments, drug abuse, theft and other emotional instabilities like depression, suicide and low self-esteem reflect the need to find the correlation indices with the school climate. Four hypotheses were formulated. A descriptive correlation research design was used for the study, with a population that comprised all full time undergraduate students in 2020/2021 academic session, 420 students were selected for the study with emphasis on those in their penultimate and final year. Self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data on school climate, physical safety, emotional stability and sexual harassments while data on the quality of life was collected using an adapted Quality of Life Scale (QoLS) developed by Anderson and Burckhard. The psychometric properties of the instrument were ascertained for accuracy and reliability. Collected data were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that physical safety, emotional stability, sexual harassment, quality of life were positively correlated to school climate. And from the values of percentage of variability, school climate account significantly for physical safety, emotional stability, sexual harassment and quality of life of students in university of Benin. In conclusion, school climate demonstrates an indispensable factor in the physical and psychological outcome of learners, hence the need for its critical attention for improvement. The study recommend that University management and the governing councils of the universities should pay great attention to creating a positive school climate during the planning, implementation of school programmes and monitor the conduciveness of the teaching and learning environment.

Keywords:School climate, physical safety, emotional stability, sexual harassment,  quality of life and University of Benin

DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/101-01

Publication date:March 31^st 2024