Status of Counselling Awareness among Secondary School Students: A Case Study of Oji River Local Government Area of Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

Counselling provides information and assistance in critical areas of academic, social, personal, vocational, emotional and psychological challenges. Despite its importance, the level of counselling awareness among secondary school students leaves much to be desired. Hence, this descriptive study investigated status of counselling awareness among secondary school students in Oji River Local Government Area of Enugu State. A sample of 1218 students drawn from the population using proportional stratified random sampling technique participated in the study. The instrument for data collection was Counselling Awareness Inventory which was validated with the assistance of experts from the Department of Counselling Psychology. It has a reliability index of 0.83 which was established through test-retest method and Pearson correlation coefficient technique. The results of the study showed that there was no counselling awareness among the students; no significant difference in counselling awareness existed between male and female students and there was no significant difference in counselling awareness between students from schools located in urban centres and students from schools located in rural areas. It was therefore recommended that government of Enugu State should consider it a matter of necessity to employ professional counsellors and deploy them to secondary schools as staff to provide the much needed counselling services to the students.

Keywords: Career counselling, vocational counselling, academic counselling, personal counseling, marriage counselling