Abstract:
The study sought to investigate on how various family factors predict academic achievement motivation of students. The study adopted a correlation research design. Six research questions were formulated and six hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The population for the study consisted 62,758 Senior Secondary II students made up of 35, 744 males and 27,014 females in the area. The sample for the study was 900 SSII students selected through a multistage sampling procedure involving stratified random sampling techniques. The instrument used for data collection was researcher’s designed questionnaire titled “Family Factors and Academic Achievement Motivation Questionnaire”. The instrument was face validated by three experts in Educational Psychology, Guidance and Counselling and Measurement. The experts made their corrections based on simplicity and clarity of language, item coverage of the content, clarity of instruction and so on. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was also determined, using the Cronbach alpha statistics to determine the coefficient of internal consistency of the instrument. It yielded a consistency index of 0.89, 0.82, 0.82 and 0.72 for the clusters. The research questions were analysed using Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient while the null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using multiple regression test. The findings show family type does not predict academic achievement motivation of students because the prediction was of a low degree with the magnitude of only 4% variability.Similarly, family structure and family size do not predict academic achievement motivation of students due to the low degree of variability on the prediction. All these too have low degree of influence in the region studied which may be based on the type of occupation commonly practiced in the area under study. On the other hand, leadership styles of autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire practiced by household heads predicts academic achievement motivation of students. Based on the findings of the study, recommendations were made. These includes that the family type that will encourage the students to perform well should be adopted and that there should be provision of awareness creation for parents on consequences of family structure in promoting academic adjustment. Similarly household heads should adopt democratic leadership style that positively motivates students to achieve. The adoption of laissez-faire leadership style by family household heads should be with caution as it may yield a negative outcome.
