Path Analysis of Associations between Socio-psychological Factors and Moral Behaviour of Junior Secondary Students in Social Studies in the Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined associations between socio-psychological factors and the moral behaviour of junior secondary Social Studies students in the Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria. The factors examined were parenting styles, single parenting, child abuse, social media usage, peer influence, emotional intelligence, locus of control, self-concept, self-efficacy, motivation, and depression. Anchored in Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development, the study employed an ex-post facto cross-sectional survey design. Proportionate sampling was used to select 1,996 JS2 students from 32 public junior secondary schools across five Local Government Areas. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire comprising 12 expert-validated subscales; the reported Cronbach’s alpha for the overall instrument was 0.78. Mean, correlation, and path analyses were conducted at the 0.05 significance level. Emotional intelligence (r = 0.496) and peer influence (r = 0.405) showed the strongest positive correlations with the recorded Moral Behaviour scores, while the remaining socio-psychological factors showed weaker positive correlations. Of the 61 hypothesised paths, 46 were statistically significant and retained in the trimmed model. The trimmed model had χ² = 23.6, df = 14, p ≈ 0.051, GFI = 0.998, NFI = 0.996, CFI = 0.998, and RMSEA = 0.018. The findings indicate a network of direct and indirect statistical associations among the examined variables. Given the cross-sectional ex-post facto design, the directional paths should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects.