The Effect of School Attacks on Psychological Distress and Learning Disposition Among Secondary School Students in Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigates the effect of school attacks on students’ motivation towards learning among secondary school students in Nigeria. Ex post factor design was used in the study.The population of the study comprised the entire secondary school students in Borno State, with a total population of 94,409 students.  The researcher used cluster sampling to divide the schools in Borno state according to three senatorial zones that comprised the whole 80 secondary schools in the state. Within each zone 5 schools were selected, and a sample of 397 students were randomly selected and used for the study. The total number of students selected in each school was based on the population of students available in that school.Questionnaire for Assessing the Effect of School Attacks on Students’ Psychological Distress and Learning Disposition were employed as data collection technique, the reliability of the instrument was obtained using Rasch analysis.  The results obtained a reliability coefficient of 0.95 and 0.96 with corresponding Cronbach Alpha of 0.84, and 0.72 respectively.The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and SmartPLS 3. The findings indicated that the school attacks influence students’ psychological distress that negatively affect students learning disposition and the desire to display positive towards schooling. It is concluded that there is need for making strong effort address some of the problems associated with school attacks on students’ psychological distress and learning disposition in Nigeria.