| dc.description.abstract | An investigation was carried out among Kenyan Secondary School pupils in Nairobi Province with the aim of examining the relationship between home environment and adolescent maladjustment in school. Maladjustment was operationally defined in terms relevant to school counselling. Two instruments were used in this investigation. The first one was a pair of forms with a list of observable "maladjustive behaviours which were given to school teaching so that they would record the number of times a particular pupil or subject behaved in a maladjusted way. Each subject was assigned one pair of these forms. Observation was under normal school conditions. The second instrument was a questionnaire administered to the subject requiring them to indicate the type of home environment they belonged to. The types of home environments investigated were:- (i)Family stability, (ii) Parental Education,
(IIi) Parental occupation, and (iv) Family size. The concern was on the relationship between each of these environments and adolescent maladjustment. The subjects were 151 pupils from two high cost boarding secondary schools. One school was for boys while the other was for girls. In each school two Form II classes were used. There were forty one pupils in each of the two classes in the boys' school leading to a total of eighty two boys. In the girls' school one of the class had thirty six while the other had thirty three, making a total of sixty nine girls. For both sexes, the ages ranged from thirteen to seventeen years old.
The data was analyzed on the basis of percentage of maladjusted pupils found in each home environment. A chi-squared test of association was also carried out. The results showed (unexpectedly) that the level of maladjustment was higher in stable families than in unstable families. While the level of Maladjustment declined with higher education (as was expected) from non education to medium education, it rose again when it came to high (university ) education. When sex differences were considered it was found that the level of maladjustment rose with higher education among the boys while it declined with higher education among the girls. While the high occupations had the lowest level of maladjustment (as was expected) it was the middle income group which had the highest level of maladjustment and not the low income group. Sex comparisons showed that among the girls, maladjustment was high in the low income group. The contary was true among the boys. | en |
