GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT The study investigated the influence of family variables on juvenile delinquency among students in Oron Education Zone of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The population of this study consisted of all the 4527 Senior Secondary Two (SS2) students in all the 22 public secondary schools in Oron education zone during the 2014/2015 school year. The study adopted a non-experimental survey to assess family variables on juvenile delinquency among students. The Data collected from the respondents were coded and transferred into a spreadsheet and summarized. They were coded into the computer and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 11.0 while all the hypotheses were tested at .05 alpha. The instrument for data collection was the questionnaire. The questionnaire was titled “Family Variable and Juvenile Delinquency Questionnaire (FVJDQ)” and had three sections. A total of 360 (three hundred and sixty) Senior Secondary Two (SS2) students were selected for the study through simple random sampling technique. From the results of the data analysis, it was observed that family variable have significant influence on students’ juvenile delinquency. The researcher concluded that students from intact homes are less delinquent compared to those from broken homes. One of the recommendations was the damaging effects of broken and separated family should be checked by parents in order to prevent the level of divorce, unplanned pregnancy and unprepared parenthood. Hence, the need to keep the family intact by parents. Key words: Family type, family size, juvenile delinquency, Oron Education Zone, Akwa Ibom State.