Abstract:
Offending Behaviour (OB), a transgression against norms and social order, is generally
detested by society and the criminal justice system. Extant literature has shown that outof-school adolescents in motor parks in Ogun State exhibit high offending behaviour.
Previous studies on OB largely focused on the influence of environmental and parental
factors with little attention paid to interventions such as reciprocal peer tutoring and
multisystemic therapy. This study, therefore, was designed to determine the effects
of Reciprocal Peer Tutoring (RPT) and Multisystemic (MT) therapies on OB among
out-of-school adolescents in Motor Parks in Ogun State, Nigeria. The moderating
effects of Peer Influence (PI) and Self-control were also examined.
Albert Bandura’s Social Learning and Jeremy Bentham’s Rational Choice theories
were adopted as the framework, while the pretest-posttest control quasi-experimental
design with a 3×2×2 factorial matrix was utilised. Three local governments (Abeokuta
North – Lafenwa; Ado Odo-Ota – Sango-ota; and Sagamu – Isale Oko) were
purposively selected based on the high number of out-of-school adolescents in the
motor parks. The participants were screened with the Modified Criminal
Sentiments Scale (r=0.73); and those who scored 25 and above were selected. The
participants were assigned to RPT (29), MT (30), and control (30) groups. The
instruments used were OB (r=0.79), PI (r=0.71), and Self-control (r=0,70) scales. The
treatment lasted eight weeks. The data were analysed using Analysis of covariance and
Scheffe post-hoc test at 0.05 level of significance.
The participants’ age was 17.35±1.50 years, and 95% were males. Against the threshold
of 25.1, their PI (𝑥̅=35.9) and Self-control (𝑥̅=32.5) were high. There was a significant
main effect of treatment on OB (F(2; 86)=246.81; partial η2=0.88). The participants in the
MT group had the highest reduced post-OB mean score (33.07), followed by those in
RPT (36.86) and control (63.17) groups. There were significant main effects of PI
(F(2; 86)=29.52; partial η2=0.44) and Self-control (F(2; 86)=8.71; partial η2=0.20) on
participants’ OB. The participants with low PI had the highest reduced post-OB mean
score (36.85), followed by those in moderate PI (44.21) and high PI (52.47) in the
MST group. The participants with high Self-control had the highest reduced post-OB
mean score (34.03), followed by those in moderate Self-control (49.57) and low Selfcontrol (57.48) groups. There were significant two-way interaction effects of treatment
and PI (F(2; 86)=11.56; partial η2=0.33); treatment and Self-control (F(2; 86)=5.76; partial
η2=0.20); and PI and Self-control (F(2, 86)=10.77; partial η2=0.32), in favour of low PI,
high Self-control from the MT; low PI and high Self-control from the RPT groups,
respectively. The three-way interaction effect was significant (F(2; 86)=3.69; partial
η2=0.10), in favour of participants with high Self-control and low PI from RPT.
Multisystemic, more than Reciprocal peer tutoring therapy reduced offending
behaviour of out-of-school adolescents in motor parks in Ogun State, Nigeria.
Counselling psychologists should adopt these therapies in managing offending
behaviour among out-of-school adolescents, with consideration to peer influence
and self-control.
