Influence of Agricultural Public Relations on Secondary School Students’ Interest, Choice and Achievement in Agricultural Science in Benue State, Nigeria

Abstract

Agricultural science taught in secondary schools is faced with challenges of lack of interest and low enrolment due to lack of awareness on the prospects it holds to students. The main purpose of this study was to investigate Influence of agricultural public relations on secondary school students’ interest, choice and achievement in agricultural science in Benue State, Nigeria. The study was guided by four objectives, questions and null hypotheses. The study adopted correlation design. The total population for the study was 11,381 consisting of 347 teachers of Agriculture, 24 Guidance Counsellors and 11,010 Upper Basic 9 students with sample size of 386. The three instruments used for data collection were titled Agricultural Public Relations Questionnaire (APRQ), Agriculture Achievement Test (AAT) and Interest Inventory in Agriculture (IIA) were validated by five experts for face and content validity and were trial-tested on 30 respondents. Split-half, Cronbach-Alpha and Kuder Richardson 21 methods of reliability were used to obtain reliability coefficients of 0.988, 0.990 and 0.713 for APRQ and IIA /AAT respectively. The data were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient-PPMCC (r) to answer the research questions and null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed moderate to high positive relationship between Agricultural Public Relations and choice/ students’ interest in Agricultural Science. The study recommended creating ingenious activities that will pique students’ interest in agriculture and presenting carefully package information to students and public that is very appealing to attract them to agricultural science.