REDUCING SEXUAL ASSULT AND RAPE THROUGH CORE LIFE SKILL TRAINING AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN AKURE SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

Abstract

The incidents of sexual assault and/or rape in recent times cannot but considered as a menace that needs to be war off in our society. Many scholars, writers and researchers have tried to proffer solutions but to no avail, the need for the undertaking this study which scope was limited to Akure South Local Government Area of Ondo State, Nigeria with a sample size of Five (5) Secondary Schools and twenty adolescent students from each school hence, hundred (100) size. A multi stage sampling procedure was adopted in the selection of schools in the local government area. The Life Skills Assessment Scale (LSAS) developed by Olawale (2011) was adopted for the study. Four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results reveals that there is a significant positive relationship between self-esteem/awareness, assertiveness, coping with emotions, rape and sexual assaults. Assertiveness positively correlated with parenting styles (r = .155, p<.001) and coping with emotions (r= .251, p<.001). Furthermore, it was revealed that there is a significant joint contribution of the independent variables to the prediction of rape and sexual assaults. The result yielded a coefficient of multiple regressions R= 0.817, multiple R² = 0.668 and Adjusted R² =.664. It was found out that the two predicting variables are potent reducing of sexual assaults. The most potent factor predicting sexual assaults or rape is perceived assertiveness (β = .254, t = 7.096, P<0.01), followed by self-esteem (β = -.011, t = -.282, P>0.05). It was concluded that the use of core life skill training is a potent means of ameliorating rape and sexual assaults drastically, if not eradicating the menace of sexual assaults and rape among middle adolescent school students. Hence, it was recommended that counseling psychologists, especially school counsellors should be up and doing in discharging their duties. There is need for school counsellors to brace up in providing functional counselling services to school adolescents and all and sundry.