Gender and Location as Factors Determinants of Secondary School Students Civic Engagement in Oyo State, Nigeria
The research adopted a descriptive research design of the survey type. The population consisted of 411,912 public secondary school students in Oyo State, Nigeria’s urban and rural areas. The study sample consisted of 600 public secondary school students’ selected using multistage sampling procedures, including simple random sampling techniques and stratified random sampling techniques. The instrument used to collect data was a questionnaire titled ‘Students’ Civic Engagement Questionnaire’ (SCEQ). The instrument’s validity was established through the face and content validity while the instrument’s reliability was determined using the Cronbach alpha method and a reliability coefficient of 0.72 was obtained. The data collected were analyzed using inferential statistics of the t-test to test the hypotheses formulated. All hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed no significant difference between male and female students’ attitudes towards civic engagement, but there is a significant difference between the civic engagement of secondary school students living in rural and urban areas. It was recommended that students be enlightened and encouraged to participate in civic obligations especially in urban areas such as community service to develop positive attitudes towards civic engagement.