Playground Clothing Maintenance Skills Needed by Mothers of Primary School Children in Imo State

Abstract

The major purpose of the study was to determine the playground clothing maintenance skills needed by mothers of primary school children in Imo State. Specifically, the study examined :the mending skills, the laundry skills and the storage skills, it also examined the problems faced by mothers in the maintenance of primary school children’s playground clothing and the methods needed by mothers for improving the maintenance of primary school children’s playground clothing in Imo State.The study adopted a descriptive survey research design Five research questions were developed and answered while three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at ≤ 0.05 level of significance. The population for the study consist of fifteen thousand and eighty (15,080) which comprises women of child bearing age (20 -45 years) residing in both rural and urban area of the 27 local government areas of Imo state. Multi- stage sampling technique was used to select the sample and the sample size is four hundred (400) respondents which represents three percent (3%) of the population. The instrument for data collection was structured questionnaire titled: the playground clothing maintenance skills needed by mothers of primary school children in Imo State. It contained sixty nine (69) items. The questionnaire was subjected to face validation by three experts and Crombach Alpha reliability coefficient was used to test the internal consistency of the instrument. The data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed using mean and Improvement Need Index (INI) for answering the research questions while t-test was used for hypotheses testing at ≤ 0.05 level of significance. Four (4) mending skills, several stain removing skills and five (5) Storage skills are needed by mothers. Seven (7) Problems were faced by mothers in the maintenance of play ground clothing of their primary school and Six (6) measures needed by mothers for improving the maintenance skills of primary school children’s playground clothing were agreed on by the respondents. There was no significant (≤ 0.05) difference in the mean rating of the rural and urban dwelling mothers on the skills used in mending, laundry and storage skills used in the maintenance of play ground clothing of their primary school children The study concluded that mothers need improvement in many skills in mending, stain removal, washing and storage of their primary school children’s clothing for optimal health of primary school children. Good health of these children leads to improved growth rate and can help in the preservation of the future of the society and the country at large. Based on the above findings, it was concluded that mothers need skills in mending, stain removing , washing and storage of their primary school children and it was recommended that maintenance skills for playground clothing should be included in the school curriculum and different mediums should be created to educate mothers on different skills needed for the maintenance of their children’s playground clothing