Girl Child Early Marriage And Its Impact On Education: A Case Study Of Cross River State

Abstract

This study sought to investigate primarily the extent of girl child marriage and how it impacts education in Cross River State. Four purpose, research questions and hypothesis guided the study. The research design adopted for this study was the survey research design. The population for the study was all parents with school aged girls in their homes in Cross River State, Nigeria. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select nine local government for the study out of the 18 local government in the state. The actual sample respondents of 378 parents with school aged girls in their homes in Cross River State was drawn for the study from the sampled LGA. Three experts validated the instruments both the used to collect data for the study. Instrument was used for the study, the instrument was titled “Girl Child Early Marriage and Education questionnaire” was administered to the respondents to elicit their responses. The instruments was 23 items with 4-option answer format and 3 items to elicit the respondent’s demographic data. A pilot study was conducted on a sample of 40 participants and internal consistency coefficient ranging from .80-.83 was obtained using Cronbach alpha reliability estimate methods. The researchers administered the instruments on the sampled respondents in the selected faculty. The data that was collected was analyzed using and the hypothesis was tested using independent t-test, one way analysis of variance and Pearson product moment correlations at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that Rate of Girl child marriage, Girl child family Social economic status, and Girl child Parental type education does significantly influence education in Cross River State. It was further fund that there is a strong positive relationship between Old folktales about girl child early marriage and education in Cross-River State. Above all it was recommended that government should create and implement policy that will efficiently improve educational accessibility among minority groups.