Abstract:
Secondary school students are exposed to many problems which they are unable to
handle on their own and instead of seeking counselling, they tend to keep these
problems to themselves. Many factors including perceptions of social supports,
personal coping, self-efficacy, help-seeking experiences, attitudes toward
psychological help, locus of control, perceived problem severity and gender among
others influence the help-seeking behaviour. The purpose of this study therefore was
to examine the influence of the students‟ attitudes toward psychological help, locus of
control, gender, and problem severity on help-seeking behaviour, among public
secondary school students in Nyeri and Nairobi counties and to find out whether the
identified factors differ in the two counties. The study employed ex-post-facto-causal
comparative research design. The population of study was 61342 students and 380
teacher counsellors. Stratified random sampling procedure was used to classify
schools as boys‟ only, girls‟ only and mixed schools and also male and female
students. Systematic sampling was then used to get the 20 schools and then 20
students in each sampled school. Two teacher counsellors were purposively sampled
to give a total of 40. Quantitative data was collected through administration of
teacher-counsellors and students‟ questionnaires. The instruments were pilot tested for
validity and reliability in 4 public schools, 2 in each County and a Cronbach Alpha
correlation coefficient for students‟ questionnaire was r=0.7805 while that for the
teacher counsellors was r=0.7106. The study findings showed that, the male students
sought counselling more than the females and that gender differences in help-seeking
were significant in Nairobi but not in Nyeri as per the t-test results. The Pearson‟s
Product Moment Correlation Coefficient showed that there was no statistically
significant relationship between locus of control and help-seeking behaviour among
students in the two counties. Findings further showed a positive statistically
significant correlation between problem severity and the frequency of help-seeking
behaviour among Nyeri students but not among Nairobi students as per the Chi-square
test results. This study therefore recommends that, guidance and counselling services
in schools to be provided by professionally trained counsellors and both genders of
students should be given similar treatment to ensure well adjustment among boys and
girls
