INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS ON EMOTIONAL ADJUSTMENT OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NASARAWA STATE

This study investigated the influence of parent’s socio-economic background on emotional adjustment of senior secondary school students in Nasarawa State. The variables under study are parents’ educational level, parents’ income level and occupational status. In doing this, three research questions were structured to guide the study. Also, three hypotheses were formulated to be tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a descriptive survey design which is aimed at examining the influence of parent’s socio-economic background on emotional adjustment of secondary school students in Nasarawa State. The population of this study covers sixty five thousand students (65,000). The sample size was 376 students. In undertaking the study, the researcher made use of structured questionnaire. The questionnaire which has 15 items was constructed to elicit responses from the respondents. The validity and reliability was high enough for this study. The data obtained from the study was analyzed using tables, percentages, mean scores and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while chi-square statistics were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The finding revealed that parents’ educational level, income level and occupational status have significant influence on emotional adjustment of students. The study recommended that with parental educational level, income level, and occupational status having a significant influence on the emotional adjustment of secondary school students, the government should at least provide free education to citizens and make adult education more pronounced and provide jobs to parents to help them have income to cater for their children’s educational needs that will give positive emotional adjustment.