EFFECT OF PSYCHO-EDUCATION ON PRONENESS TO ACADEMIC CHEATING BEHAVIOURS AMONG IN-SCHOOL ADOLESCENTS IN ILORIN METROPOLIS, KWARA STATE, NIGERIA

Academic cheating behaviours are common in the Nigerian education system, and secondary school students are not immune because many of them are prone to it. This practice/menace continues to exist despite several countermeasures that have been implemented. Counselling intervention, however, are thought to be able to significantly reduce, if not completely abolish, students' academic cheating behaviours. The study investigated the effect of psycho-education on proneness to academic cheating behaviours among in-school adolescents in Ilorin metropolis, Kwara State, Nigeria. Three null hypotheses guided the study and a quasi experimental pre-test post-test control group design was adopted to carry out the study. 37 participants (!7 participants for experimental group and 20 participants for the control group) were selected from the three Local Government Areas of Ilorin Metropolis. The instruments for data collection are Proneness to Academic Cheating Behaviour Questionnaire by Selehi and Gholampour (2021) and Self Efficacy Questionnaire by AbdulGafoor and Ashraf (2006); with reliability indices of 0.89, and 0.90 and respectively. The descriptive statistics of percentage was used to describe the demographic factors of the respondents; while the inferential statistics of Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses. The findings revealed that psycho-education is an effective counselling intervention for reducing students’ proneness to academic cheating behaviours and improved their self-efficacy regardless of their gender difference. It was recommended among others that school counsellors and the authorities should consider integrating counselling interventions into the school counselling programmes to reduce students’ susceptibility to academic cheating behaviours and to enhance their self-efficacy.