DEVELOPMENT OF FAMILY LAW AWARENESS PROGRAMME FOR FAMILIES IN ANAMBRA STATE
Abstract
The general purpose of this study was to develop family law awareness programme for families in Anambra State. Specially, the study; identified the appropriate objectives of family law awareness programme for families in Anambra State; determined the content of family law awareness programme; identified the delivery systems for implementing the family law awareness programme; determined the evaluation activities of Family Law Awareness programme for families in Anambra State; developed a draft FLAWP based on the findings from specific purposes 1-4; validated the draft of family law awareness programme ; and assessed the family law awareness programme for its efficacy. Five research questions guided the study and five hypotheses were tested, at 0.05 level of significance. The Research and Development (R and D) design was used. The study was carried out in four phases namely; phase 1: development of draft family law awareness programme. Phase 11: Validation of the draft programme. Phase111: Assessing the family law awareness programme using family law awareness test and phase 1V: Revision of the programme. The area of the study was Anambra State. The population was made up of 395,065 persons namely 3,500 lawyers; 9,500 Policemen; 2,050 Nigerian Civil Defence Corps; 500 Social welfare officers; 10 Human Right Activists, 2000 Home Economics Teachers and 377,505 family members. The sample was 1,365 respondents. Family Law Awareness Test (FLAT) was administered to 60 family members to assess the efficacy of Family Law Awareness Programme (FLAWP). Three instruments were developed and used for the study namely: Family law Awareness Questionnaire (FLAQ) was validated by three experts, two lecturers in University of Nigeria and a police officer in charge of prosecution in Onitsha. Cronbach alpha was used to determine the internal consistency. The reliability coefficient of sections B – α = 0.71; Section C – α = 0.95; Section D – α = 0.94; Section E- α = 0.91 and overall- α r= 0.98. The reliability coefficient for the first instrument FLAQ was obtained as 0.98. The developed FLAWP was validated by five experts namely a psychologist, a Home Economist who is trained in pedagogy and is knowledgeable in programme development., a measurement and evaluation lecturer, curriculum lecturer in University of Nigeria and one family law practitioner in Anambra State Government House Awka. Content and item analysis of FLAT was carried out using test blue print (table of specification). The FLAT was trial tested for the purpose of determining psychometric indices of the test. A total of 25 items of the FLAT had good difficulty, discrimination and distractor indices. Mean was used to analyze the scores of families trained with FLAWP 21.53 was obtained and those without FLAWP had 10.15. SD 2.21 to 3.40. t-test result 21.69 shows that those trained with FLAWP performed better in FLAT test than those families who were not trained with FLAWP. The null hypothesis was rejected. There was significant difference in families trained with FLAWP and families without. The reliability coefficient of FLAT was found to be 0.96 using Pearson product moment correlation coefficient. The findings include eight child’s right law, thirteen criminal code law, six marriage Act, thirteen Matrimonial Causes Act, six landlord and Tenant law, six Administrations and Succession Estate of Deceased Person’s law, thirty nine delivery systems and twenty five evaluation activities of FLAWP. Based of the findings, five recommendations were made including, family law awareness programme should be taught in schools in Home Economics courses at all levels of education and government, NGOs and Law enforcement agents should carry out awareness campaigns on developed family law Awareness programme in rural and urban areas.