Role of Librarians in Child Abuse Sensitization in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State.

Abstract

The study investigated the “Role of  Librarians in Child Abuse Sensitization in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State’’. Simple random sampling was used to select 32 librarians (16 males and 16 females) from four libraries in four tertiary institutions (University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State University, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education and Rivers State School of Nursing). The instrument used  for data collection was a self-structured questionnaire titled “Role of Librarians in Child Abuse Sensitization in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State (ROLCAS)”. The instrument was structured in four point rating scale of agreement; that is (Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree). The validity of the instrument was carried out by two research experts in the department of Library and information science in Ignatius Ajuru University of Education. The reliability of the instrument was determined using test- retest method. The result was correlated using Pearson Product Moment Correlation, and yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.93, which indicated that the instrument was reliable. The gathered data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation and hypotheses was tested at 0.05 level of significance. It was found that flogging/beating, denial of food, hawking, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, denial of books,  unpleasant touches among others are forms of child abuse in the society. Also, it was found that disabilities, death of parents, poverty, unemployment, violent parents, low education, social isolation of families, among others are the causes of child abuse. The study also concludes that it is necessary to disseminate research information to social services, promoting awareness of child abuse by recommending novels, enhance supply of child abuse literatures in schools and develop programmes on child abuse and its prevention among others. Finally, it was also found among others that efforts should be made to educate parents and children about child abuse through the promotion of reading culture in the library, improve positive parenting through reading related literature, and provide community based reading activities on preventing child abuse. The study recommends that librarians should contribute to solving the menace of child abuse by the utilization of library holdings for awareness and sensitization.

KEYWORDS: Role, Librarian, Child, Abuse, Sensitization

DOI: 10.7176/IKM/9-5-06

Publication date:May 31^st 2019