DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES AS DETERMINANT OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS DATE RAPE AMONG UNDERGRADUATES IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTHWEST, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of demographic variables on attitude towards date rape among undergraduates in public-owned universities in Southwest, Nigeria. The research was designed to find out the combinational effect of independent variables (gender, religion, age, parental socio-economic status, and parental education) on dependent variable (attitude towards date rape), and to measure the prevalence of rape supportive attitudes among undergraduate students. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design of the expost facto type. The simple random sampling technique was used to select the universities, while convenience sampling technique was used to select respondents for the study. A convenience sample of 1,500 university students (700 male and 800 female) was selected. Age ranged between 18 and 40 years in males (M = 22.39; SD = 4.63) and females (M = 21.89; SD = 4.10). The College Date Rape Attitudes Survey (CDRAS) scale having Cronbach’s alpha of 0.83 was used for data collection. Three research questions were raised and tested at 0.05 level of significance, using Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression analysis. The result of the analysis indicated  that sex (β = -.357, p < 0.05) was significant with attitude towards date rape while age (β = -.022, p > 0.05), religion (β = .025, p > 0.05), parental educational level (β = .030, p > 0.05), family status (β = .016, p > 0.05), parent’s status (β = -.022, p > 0.05) and parent’s socio economic status (β = -.010, p > 0.05) was not significant with attitude towards date rape. Based on these findings, it was recommended that parents, government, school administrators, counselling psychologists and other stakeholders in the education industry should give sufficient attention to implementing intervention programmes that could help shape attitude of undergraduate students towards date rape and sexual violence in general.