CORRELATION OF DIVORCE AND PEER GROUP ATTITUDE AMONG STUDENTS IN ADEKUNLE AJASIN UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT Divorce is a social phenomenon that imposes unfavourable consequence on the children of divorced homes. Sometimes these children suffered emotional and psychological deprivation among their peers. At the same time, they are likely to experience material deprivation in schools. This study investigated attitude of peer group and social stigma students of divorced family experienced in some secondary schools Akoko South West Local Government, Ondo State. The study was hinged on Merton's Latent theory. Descriptive and cross-sectional design was used. Population of study was students of secondary school. Sample size was 150 and this was derived using Cochran's statistics. Multi stage sampling consisting of purposive, random ballot and accidental sampling technique was adopted. Study location was selected purposive to meet criteria of the study. Random ballot was adopted to pick secondary school where data were collected. Respondents were selected using accidental sampling. Data were collected and analysed using quantitative and qualitative method. Instruments of data collection were questionnaire and in-depth interviews (IDIs). Chi square test and correlation were significant at 0.05, confidence interval. Respondents' age was 14±0.8 and there were 57.3% male. There were 57.3% of students who lived with their mother, 40.7% lived with their father and 2.0% lived with guardian. In the study,54.0% strongly agreed that divorce imposed negative perception on children. There were 2.7% respondents stigmatized by peer group and 2.6% lacked access to educational material of their peers. In the finding, 41.3% agreed and 42.7% strongly agreed that they experienced deprivation of educational material. Respondents rated effect of deprivation of educational material as high (36.0%), moderate (42.7%) and low (21.3%). Furthermore, 39.3% and 26.7% respectively described their teacher's attitude to them as negative and positive. Sex and relationship with peer(^2>036;>053);; deprivation of teacher attention(^2>010;r>047)and level of deprivation of teacher attention(x^2p >0.36; r>0.54) was not significant. Type of parent and deprivation of educational material (x^2 p