Effect of the timeout, response cost and corporal punishment as aversive therapy in the reduction of indiscipline among Secondary School Students in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study determined the use of timeout, response cost and corporal punishment as aversive therapy in reducing indiscipline among secondary school students of Government Secondary School Oyibo, Rivers State, Nigeria. The survey design involving pre-test and post-test was used. Secondary classes I and II (SS1 and SS2) students were purposively selected. From a population of 650 SS1 and SS2 students in Government Secondary School Oyibo, Rivers State, Nigeria, fifty-four students identified through direct observation as having disciplinary problems based on the frequency of exhibition of certain acts of indiscipline were used as the sample for this study. The acts of indiscipline targeted to be reduced were noisemaking, lateness to school, and truancy. The aversive therapy techniques applied in a bid to reduce these acts of indiscipline were time-out, response cost, and corporal punishment respectively. The instrument for data collection was an observation chart designed by the researchers, while the instrument for data analysis was a t-test for a related sample. Three hypotheses were formulated for this study and tested at 0.05 significant level. Findings revealed that the time-out technique significantly reduced the frequency of noisemaking, response cost significantly reduced the frequency of lateness to school, while corporal punishment did not significantly reduce truancy. Counselling implications of the study were stated, and useful recommendations were made such as: while using time out a technique which can effectively reduce noisemaking, the child should only be made to stay in a boring place for a few minutes; to effectively use the response cost technique to control lateness to school, the desirable possessions, points, tokens, or privileges of the offenders should be removed in planned, incremental steps; and the use of corporal punishment to reduce undesired behaviour such as truancy should be avoided since it models injurious behaviour and is not very effective; if however it must be used, it must be applied with caution and love. since corporal punishment models injurious behaviour, it should be applied with caution and love.