Parental Factors and Career Decisions of Commercial Students in Public Secondary Schools in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District

Abstract

The study examined the extent to which parental factors influence career decisions of commercial students in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District. Specifically, the study determined the extent to which parents’ socio-economic status, parents’ level of education, and parents’ occupation influence career decisions of commercial students in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 6897 senior secondary three (SS3) commercial students of public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District. The sample size comprised 386 senior secondary three (SS3) commercial students of public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District. Simple random sampling technique was adopted to select the sample for the study. A 15-item questionnaire was developed by the researchers tittled “Parental Factors and Career Decisions of Commercial Students Questionnaire (PFCDCSQ)” for data collection. The instrument was trial tested on 20 commercial students in public secondary schools who were not part of the sample for the actual and Cronbach’s Alpha was used to determine the reliability coefficient which yielded 0.88. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that parents’ socio-economic status, parents’ level of education and parents’ occupation influence to a low extent the career decisions of commercial students in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District. Furthermore, the findings indicated that all the parental factors significantly influence the career decisions of commercial students in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District. It is recommended among others that parents should enhance their socio-economic status so to be able to meet the needs of their children.