Self-concept as a correlate of examination misconduct among public secondary school students in Anambra State

Abstract

The study investigated self- concept as a correlate of examination misconduct among secondary school students in Anambra State. The study was guided by three research questions and three null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted correlational research design. The  population of the study consisted of 5,102 SS 11 secondary school students in Onitsha Education Zone of Anambra State. The sample consisted of 255 SS 2 secondary school students.  Purposive random sampling technique was adopted to select six public secondary schools in Onitsha education zone of Anambra state. The instruments titled “Self-Concept Questionnaire” and “Examination Misconduct Questionnaire”  were used for data collection. The instruments were subjected to face validity and construct validity by three lecturers from Department of Educational Foundations, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University. The reliability of the instrument was 0.86 and 0.91 respectively which was gotten through cronbach alpha statistical analysis . Research questions  and hypotheses were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation co-efficient. Findings of the study revealed that there was a moderate positive relationship between self-concept and examination misconduct among public secondary school students in Anambra State. There was a moderate positive relationship between self-concept and examination misconduct among male students and weak positive relationship among female public secondary school students in Anambra State. There was a weak positive relationship between self-concept and examination misconduct among urban secondary school students and moderate positive relationship among rural-based public secondary school students in Anambra State. Based on the findings, the following recommendations among others were made which includes that male students in public secondary schools should be guided academically to be able to maintain a right self- concept towards examinations. The study contributed to the existing knowledge through providing new empirical ideas to literature on self-concept and examination misconduct among secondary school students