Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to determine the influence of parental occupational background and family status on students’ interest in junior secondary social studies in Jigawa state. Six research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. Literature was reviewed un four major sub-headings namely conceptual framework, theoretical framework, review of empirical studies, and summary of literature reviewed. The study adopted expo-facto design. The population of the study covers all the five thousand six hundred and eighty-seven (5,687) JS3 students in Jigawa State. Purposive sampling technique was used to sample four hundred and eighty JSS3 students. A structured questionnaire developed by the researcher and validated by research experts which yielded a reliability index of 0.87 was used for data collection. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the research hypotheses. The major findings of the study were that parental occupational background and family status have low influence on students’ interest in social studies in terms of gender; that parental occupational background and family status have significant influence on students’ interest in social studies in terms of location among others. Based on the findings of the study, relevant conclusions were drawn and recommendations were made.
