INVESTIGATING ROLES OF QUALITY EDUCATION IN MITIGATING ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AMONG YOUTHS IN KWARA STATE

Abstract

Immoralities are in commonplace in the world, and Nigeria is no exception and education is only an effective healing to them. This paper investigates the roles of quality education on reducing antisocial behaviors in Kwara State, Nigeria. The researchers purposively sampled 800 respondents who were selected among families residing in five towns of Agbede polygate, Akewushola, Boyi, Lajolo, and Malete in Moro Local Government Area of Kwara State. The study adopted survey research design. The research instrument used for the study was adapted and modified from prior study of Wall Myers, Sellbom and Goodwin (2013) measuring juveniles and college students’ delinquencies and antisocial conducts respectively. The adapted and modified survey questionnaire named Educational Intervention to Antisocial Behaviors (EITAB) used for this study, contains 10- item self-report inventory to reliably assess educational interventions in combating antisocial behaviors among youths in the study areas. The analysis of this study was in two ways namely; the Descriptive and Inferential statistics of the Linear Regression Analysis run with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 21 for windows by Newest. The psychometric property of the research instrument showed the Cronbach Alpha reliability of 0.76. One research question and one hypothesis were formulated for the study. The findings of the study revealed that, quality education is a lasting solution to curbing anti-social behavior according to the majority of the respondents. Additionally, the findings of the study showed that, quality education significantly reduces social vices 74% as revealed by the adjusted R Square in our environments (F=.652, p =.002). However, educational strategies such as the implementation of life-skills programmes, access to educational resources and provision of positive messages in the media could potentially reduce the prevalence of social vices in Nigeria. The paper concludes by considering the implications for further research and for practitioners working to alleviate anti-social behaviors in Nigeria. The study recommended among other things, excellent implementation of education policies that touch on societal development free of anti-social behaviors. In addition, there should be the provision of quality education to all Nigerians irrespective of religion, tribes, gender, region and languages, and particularly, youths’ inclusion in education. Quality education is to be given priority by the state governments in Nigeria not only to Kwara State in order to avoid development of social vices at all levels and education systems are to be given good attention in upholding Universal Basic Education System funded by the Federal government of Nigeria.