Influence of selected factors on help-seeking Behaviour among public secondary school students: a comparative study of Nyeri and Nairobi counties, Kenya

Abstract

Secondary school students are exposed to many problems which they are unable to handle on their own and instead of seeking counselling, they tend to keep these problems to themselves. Many factors including perceptions of social supports, personal coping, self-efficacy, help-seeking experiences, attitudes toward psychological help, locus of control, perceived problem severity and gender among others influence the help-seeking behaviour. The purpose of this study therefore was to examine the influence of the students‟ attitudes toward psychological help, locus of control, gender, and problem severity on help-seeking behaviour, among public secondary school students in Nyeri and Nairobi counties and to find out whether the identified factors differ in the two counties. The study employed ex-post-facto-causal comparative research design. The population of study was 61342 students and 380 teacher counsellors. Stratified random sampling procedure was used to classify schools as boys‟ only, girls‟ only and mixed schools and also male and female students. Systematic sampling was then used to get the 20 schools and then 20 students in each sampled school. Two teacher counsellors were purposively sampled to give a total of 40. Quantitative data was collected through administration of teacher-counsellors and students‟ questionnaires. The instruments were pilot tested for validity and reliability in 4 public schools, 2 in each County and a Cronbach Alpha correlation coefficient for students‟ questionnaire was r=0.7805 while that for the teacher counsellors was r=0.7106. The study findings showed that, the male students sought counselling more than the females and that gender differences in help-seeking were significant in Nairobi but not in Nyeri as per the t-test results. The Pearson‟s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient showed that there was no statistically significant relationship between locus of control and help-seeking behaviour among students in the two counties. Findings further showed a positive statistically significant correlation between problem severity and the frequency of help-seeking behaviour among Nyeri students but not among Nairobi students as per the Chi-square test results. This study therefore recommends that, guidance and counselling services in schools to be provided by professionally trained counsellors and both genders of students should be given similar treatment to ensure well adjustment among boys and girls