AVAILABILITY OF LABORATORY SAFETY SPECIFICATIONS AND AWARENESS OF LABORATORY SAFETY PRECAUTIONS AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL BIOLOGY STUDENTS IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

The study investigated the availability of laboratory safety specifications and awareness of laboratory safety precautions among senior secondary school Biology Students in Anambra State, Nigeria, adopting a descriptive survey research design. Three research questions guided the study and one null hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. A sample of 720 Senior Secondary School Year Two (SS2) students were drawn from the population of 15,744 students offering Biology, using multi-stage sampling procedure. Two instruments were used for the study. The first instrument titled; Availability of laboratory safety specification checklist (ALSSC) has two sections, availability of laboratory safety facilities (ALSF) and Availability of laboratory safety equipment and materials. The second instrument, Awareness of laboratory safety precaution questionnaire (ALSPQ). Both instruments were validated by experts in science education and employed for data collection. A reliability coefficient of 0.73 and 0.67 was obtained for the two sections of ALSSC respectively.  And 0.82 for ALSPQ where ascertained using Kuder Richardson formula 21. The instruments administered with the help of two research assistants and data collected were analyzed using Percentage to answer the research questions and chi square test of independence was used to test the null hypotheses, at 0.05 alpha levels. The findings revealed among others that safety facilities as well equipment and materials are not available in Biology laboratories in secondary schools in Anambra State. Also, both male and female biology students agreed that they were not aware of laboratory safety precautions. And there is no significant difference in the awareness of laboratory safety precautions by male and female secondary school students offering Biology in Anambra State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that government and school administrators should prioritize the provision of safety concerns and materials in secondary school laboratories.