Abstract

The study investigated the influence of orientation service on adjustment of fresh boarding secondary school students in Zone B senatorial District of Benue Stare, Nigeria. Two specific objectives with corresponding research questions guided the study and two hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a survey research design. The population for the study comprises 1735 Senior Secondary I (SSI) students in selected boarding secondary schools in Zone B Senatorial District of Benue State. The sample size of 325 students determined using Taro Yamane formula was randomly selected across the boarding secondary schools. The instrument for data collection was a self-developed questionnaire titled “Orientation Services and Adjustment Questionnaire” (OSAQ). The questionnaire was validated by experts and its reliability was established using Cronbach Alpha method. The Cronbach Alpha method yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.79. Data for the study was collected personally by the researcher with the aid of research assistants. Data collected for the study was analyzed using Means and Standard Deviation to answer the research questions and Chi-Square statistic to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study revealed that, orientation service has significant positive influence on the emotional and social adjustment of fresh boarding secondary school students in Zone B Senatorial District of Benue State, Nigeria. Based on the findings, it was recommended that, all secondary schools should establish counselling units or centers where students can be assisted to sort out their school adjustment problems (emotional, social, academic and physical among others) in order to cope well; all secondary schools should make it compulsory for every fresh student to participate in orientation activities of the school for positive adjustment. Supplementary orientation should be organized for fresh students that miss out to ensure no student is left out for orientation and counsellors should endeavour to make follow-ups to ascertain students’ level of functioning after they have received the orientation services as this will help them to evaluate the effectiveness of the services they offer and therefore lead to the necessary modifications resulting to improvement of the services