GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT
This study investigated family factors and juvenile delinquency among public senior
secondary school students in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State. Five
research questions and five corresponding null hypotheses guided the study. The
study adopted an ex-post facto research design. The population for the study
comprised all 15,497 SS II students. A sample of 400 SS II students was drawn from
the population through a purposive sampling technique. Two instruments, titled
"Family Factors Scale" (FVS) and "Juvenile Delinquency Scale" (JDS), were used for
data collection. The face and content validity of the instruments were established by
experts. Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficients for (FVS) and (JDS) were 0.87 and
0.74, respectively. The instruments were personally administered and collected by
the researcher. Mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research
questions. Independent t-test was used to test hypotheses 1 and 2, while hypothesis
3 was tested using one-way ANOVA at 0.05 level of significance. It was found that;
there is significant influence of family size, family types and parental levels of
education on juvenile delinquency among public senior secondary school students
independently taken. Based on the findings of the study, conclusions and
recommendations were made.
KEYWORDS: Family, Family factors, Juvenile Delinquencies and students