Strategies for Improving the Study Habits of Post Primary School Students in Lagos State: Implication for Counselling

The study examined the strategies for improving the study habits of post primary school students in Nigeria. The scope of the study was limited to Eti-osa Local Government Area of Lagos State. Three research questions guided the study. This study employed the descriptive survey research design. Population of the Study consisted of all post primary school teachers and students in Eti-osa Local Government Area of Lagos State. Simple random sampling technique was utilized for selecting 10 post primary schools while purposive sampling method was employed in choosing the respondents. The instrument used for data collection was a research questionnaire titled: Strategies for Improving Post Primary School Students Study Habits Inventory (SIPPSSSHI). The researcher-made questionnaire was constructed in two sections, A and B. Section A involves the demographic information which include variables as gender, age, educational qualification while  Section B was designed to measure the strategies for improving the study habits of post primary school students which was on a four point likert scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 4 (Strongly agree).The instrument was given to Education experts in the Department of Educational Foundations, NOUN to ascertain its face and content validity and the corrected version was used in the study. The reliability of the instrument was determined by administering it on a sample of 30 post primary school teachers and students in the Apapa local government area of Lagos State, which was not part of the original sample population. The data were analysed with the Cronbach alpha statistics. The coefficient of reliability obtained was 0.81 which was appropriate for the studies. The questionnaires were personally administered by the researchers to 200 respondents (100 teachers and 100 students) to ensure that copies of the questionnaire got to the respondents at the right time and subsequently retrieved. The data collected were analyzed with descriptive statistics and the Independent Sample Test (IST).  The results of the study revealed that there are several strategies that can improve the study habits of post primary school students in Eti-osa Local Government Area of Lagos State; there is a significant difference between teachers and students views and between male and female respondents on the strategies to improve the study habits of Post primary school students. It was recommended among others that teachers should be adequately trained on the skills of guided reading to enable them device strategies to encourage students to study effectively and improve the academic performances of secondary schools students.