An Investigation into the Sources of Threat to Educational and Employment Opportunities of Persons with Disabilities in North-Central Nigeria
Yunusa Abejide Jimoh
Department of Educational Psychology and Counselling, School of Education, Federal College of Education Kontagora, Niger State, Nigeria. Email: jaleoyemiyunusa@gmail.com
Abstract
The study investigated the sources of threat to educational and employment opportunities of person with disabilities in North-Central Nigeria. Descriptive survey research design was adopted and the population comprised of persons with disabilities and their caregivers (teachers and parents/guardians) in North-Central, Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique was utilized to sample 201 respondents. A self-developed questionnaire titled “Person with Disability Questionnaire (PWDQ)” was used to obtain information. The instruments were given to three experts in the field of Special Need Education, Psychology and Counselling for content validation and using split-half method of reliability, coefficient of 0.87 was obtained for the study. The researcher, with the help of three research assistants administered the instrument to respondents. Simple percentage was used for demographic data of the respondents; descriptive statistics of means, standard deviation and rank order were used in answering the research questions while inferential statistics of an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.5 level of significance. The findings show that government, physical facilities, social perception, culture and economics are sources of threat to educational opportunities of persons with disabilities and there is significant difference in the sources of threat to educational opportunities of PWDs in North-Central, Nigeria based on disability type. It is recommended among others that government should intensify her effort in establishing schools for special need persons in every local government area of Niger State and inclusive schools should be well-equipped to augment the schools for the person with special needs in providing accessibility to education.
Keywords
Educational opportunities, employment opportunity, person with disabilities
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