dc.description.abstract |
Globally, urbanization, industrialization, globalization, changing cultural trends and the social metric shift of the late 20th
century has led to profound change in family patterns worldwide over the last five decades. The trends indicate that the
number of children living in two parent families is declining sharply. On the other hand, the trend shows that the number of
children living in single parent families is on the increase. These trends in the family structure have major implications on the
psychosocial factors and academic performance of children. Poor academic performance, increase in psychosocial problems
such as drug abuse, school arson and strikes, bullying, early sexual debut, teen pregnancy, suicidal thoughts and suicide, and
examination malpractices among secondary school students is becoming a major challenge in Kenya. These problems are
linked to psychosocial distress caused partly by family structures. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of
family structure on students’ academic performance and self-acceptance. The study was grounded on Maslow’s Hierarchy of
need’s and Social cognitive theories. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Purposive sampling, stratified random
sampling and simple random sampling designs were used accordingly to select 385 form four students. These sampling
procedures yielded 194 boys and 191 girls for the study. A self-administered questionnaire containing sub- scales on selfacceptance, interpersonal relationships and social integration and score sheets for the 2017 form four Kenya national
examination were used for data collection. This questionnaire was initially piloted to assert its validity and reliability. The
hypotheses on the influence of family structure on academic performance, self-acceptance, interpersonal relationships and
social integration were tested using Kruskal Wallis H test (one-way ANOVA on ranks). On the other hand, the hypothesis on
gender and school type differences in the dependent variables were tested by Independent Samples t-Test. All the tests were
carried out at 0.05 level of significance. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 was used in tabulation of
variables, generation of appropriate frequency percentages and calculating the relevant statistics. The study findings indicate
that majority of students had low self-acceptance levels. Family structure was found to influence self-acceptance significantly.
The findings of study are expected to be of importance to educators, teachers and parents in understanding the influence of
family structure on students’ academic performance and psychosocial factors and how to improve the psychosocial wellbeing
and academic performance of students from the various family structures. |
en_US |