Parenting and Mass Media as Determinants of Cultism among Students of Delta State University, Delta State

This study examined parenting and mass media as determinants of cultism among students at Delta State University. The menace of cultism has eroded the conducive healthy social learning environment existing hitherto in Delta State University campuses. Two research questions and two corresponding null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The study was a survey and it adopted an ex-post facto correlational design. The population comprised of 5,272 students from the three campuses of the university (Abraka, Oleh, and Asaba). The sample size of 600, comprising of 240 males and 360 females were selected from the students for the study, using the multistage random sampling technique. The research instrument used for data collection was a validated self-constructed instrument titled “Parenting, Mass Media and Cultism Scale” (PMCS). The reliability indices for the sub instruments were parenting r = 0.65, mass media r = 0.55, and cultism 0.53 but had an overall reliability coefficient of 0.79. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation statistical tool was used to analyze the data. The findings of the study revealed that parenting had no significant relationship with cultism while Mass Media had the greatest influence (4.1%) in determining students’ involvement in cultism at Delta State University. Based on the findings, the study recommends among others, that government should create an agency that will censor the type of films and images produced by the members of Nigeria Movie Producers Association (NMPA) before selling them to the public and an awareness campaign against the negative impact of cultism in the media should be organized by corporate bodies, government, parents, counsellors and other individuals.