Effects of Individual and Group Counseling on Truant Behaviour among Secondary School Students in Taraba State Nigeria

There has been concerns of truancy among students in secondary schools in Taraba State Nigeria. This menace has contributed to students’ poor academic performance. Truancy is about learners who have not been attending school regularly as required by the school, parents and even the authorities. Truant behaviour is a problem for the individual, the family, the school and society in general. This study was carried out to determine effects of individual and group counseling on secondary school students’ truant behaviour in Taraba State, Nigeria. Quasi-Experimental Design was used for the study. A questionnaire coded Truant Habit Scale (THS) was developed by the researchers and used for the collection of data. The Truant Habit Scale (THS) was validated and a reliability index of 0.80 was obtained using test-retest method. The reliability of the instrument was determined using test retest method and the correlation coefficient score of 0.80 was obtained. The population of the study consisted of 14, 196 senior secondary school two (SS2) students in the 2018/2019 session. A sample of 450 SS 2 students was drawn from the 9 secondary schools cutting across the 9 education zones of Taraba State Nigeria. A simple random technique was used in drawing the sample. The research questions were answered with mean and standard deviation while the null hypotheses were tested with t-test and ANOVA at p