Abstract

The general purpose of the study was to estimate the predictive powers of parental support and domestic violence on child abuse among pupils in South-East, Nigeria. The study was guided by two research questions and two null hypotheses. The study adopted a correlational survey research design with a population of 481,533 primary five pupils in public primary schools in South-East, Nigeria. A sample of 400 primary five pupils’ was drawn using a multi-stage sampling procedure. Three instruments were used for data collection: Parental Social Support Questionnaire (PSSQ), Parental Domestic Violence Questionnaire (PDVQ) and Child Abuse Questionnaire (CAQ). The reliability of the instrument was established by trial-testing on 30 primary five pupils that were not part of the sample. Cronbach’s Alpha Reliability method was used to determine the internal consistency of the instruments. The reliability coefficients of 0.88, 0.80 and 0.75 were obtained for parental social support questionnaire, parental domestic violence and child abuse questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using simple linear regression analysis. Specifically, the Coefficient of Determination (r²) was used to answer research questions and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) aspect of simple linear regression was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that parental social support significantly predicted child abuse negatively while domestic violence significantly predicted child abuse positively. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that parents should provide enough social support to their children’s proper development and emotional stability.

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