JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS AS PERCEIVED BY TEACHERS IN ISEYIN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, OYO STATE

Juvenile delinquency has been observed to be a pressing social issue affecting secondary school students in many parts of Nigeria, including Iseyin Local Government Area of Oyo State. Thus, this study investigated the factors responsible for this source. The specific objective was to examine the factors responsible for juvenile delinquency and the moderating influence of gender, school location and teaching experience of teachers in Iseyin Local Government Area of Oyo State. A descriptive design was adopted for this study. The population of this study comprised all teachers in Oyo State, Nigeria which is estimated 679,592. However, simple random sampling technique was used to select 400 respondents out of the 679,592. The instrument used was a researcher-designed questionnaire entitled “Factors Responsible for Juvenile Delinquency Questionnaire (FRJDQ)”. The instrument has reliability co-efficient of 0.79 after being subjected to the test -re-test method. The hypotheses were analyzed with t-test and Analysis of Variance statistics. All hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level. The findings of this study revealed that the most factors responsible for juvenile delinquency among secondary school students in Iseyin Local Government Area of Oyo State were social and economic factors, family background and peer influence. There is a significant difference on factors responsible for juvenile delinquency among secondary school students in Iseyin Local Government Area of Oyo State based on gender. However, there is no significant difference on factors responsible for juvenile delinquency among secondary school students based on school’s location and years of teaching experience. The study, therefore, recommended that there should be seminar for parents, teachers and school administrators on how they can reduce the level of juvenile delinquency, irrespective of the years of teaching experience, gender and school location. Keywords: Juvenile Delinquency, Secondary Schools, Teaching experience, Family background, Iseyin Local Government Area of Oyo State