EFFECTS OF SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING ON PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

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INTRODUCTION
Adolescence is a time of transition that every person must go through to develop from childhood to adulthood. It is a period of transformation and of creating an adult out of a child. It terminates childhood and marks the beginning of adulthood. It is the pubescence stage between the ages of 13 to 19. Adolescents always feel on top of the world and develop a larger-than-life attitude towards events around them. They often mismanage difficult challenges due to their wrong perceptions of themselves, coupled with their inappropriate interpersonal skills and lack of prosocial behaviour.
Prosocial behaviour also known as voluntary behaviour is an attempt planned primarily to support or benefit other people. It is a psychological concept that includes a wide range of positive actions. It is related to various aspects of positive development among young people, which include educational attainment, contentment with individual accomplishment, self-esteem, social skills and any action aimed at helping others. It is a healthy human act such as helping, sharing, cooperating, donating, volunteering, compliance with laws and socially acceptable behaviours (Lai, Sie & Shek, 2015: Onyencho & Afolabi, 2018. Prosocial behaviour, according to Olanrewaju and Aliyu (2017) is an activity that benefits others, such as adhering to game rules, being truthful, and collaborating with others in social settings. These positive events are meant to benefit others regardless of the shared relationship. It is a way of helping an individual in need, sharing personal resources, voluntary efforts, expertise and cooperation with others to achieve a purpose. Giving is a prosocial action, such as when someone donates blood. It is any action that is driven by empathy and shares the concern about other people's rights and welfare (Santock, 2007). Alturas and Ausra (2016) affirmed that a better understanding of overall psychosocial development during adolescence could only be gotten through proper knowledge about prosocial behaviour.
Prosocial behaviour is a multidimensional behaviours conducted towards helping, comforting, donating and showing kindness to other people and sometimes for practical considerations, for instance, allegiance to one's perceived system of justice, hopes for direct or indirect transaction, or social reputation. Altruism motivates prosocial behaviour, although the nature of pure altruism is rather controversial, as some believe that it falls within the philosophical rather than psychological realm of discussion (Sloam-Wilson, 2015). Prosocial behaviour increases gradually over time as a child grows to become an adolescent and it is closely linked to the growth of moral reasoning, empathy and the perception of a growing child.
Children with prosocial behaviour are more likely to have optimistic selfconceptions and become unselfish. They are not self-centered and are more othersoriented. As it suits their own desires, they dedicate more resources to helping others in need. They have positive peer interactions, more attractive to their peers, and thus more desirable to their colleagues, and thus more likely to stay optimistic in a relationship. In our society, a number of reasons are responsible for anti-social behaviour and the theorists of prosocial behaviour are concerned with how these anti-social behavioural patterns can be put under control. One of such ways is to stimulate the prosocial behaviour of adolescents through its many different predictors. Various researchers, Afolabi (2013), Hine (2013), and Lai,Sie and Shek (2015) have listed different predictors of prosocial behaviour in adolescents which include altruism, public, empathy, morality and emotionality. Altruistic prosocial behaviour is a form of voluntary helping that is determined mostly out of concern for the welfare, assistance, and needs of other people often encouraged by sympathy. Public, according to Carlos (2002), is a type of prosocial behaviour that is performed before an audience and is likely to be motivated by the desire to gain support and respect for others and improve one's own worth. Empathy is a type of prosocial behaviour that explores the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of other people without passing judgment and concisely communicates ones understands to that person. Morality is defined as a way of making an impact on the development of prosocial behaviour. It is the advent and changes in the understanding and feeling of an individual about moral principles throughout the life span of a man (Lai et al., 2015).
Researchers have used different psychological interventions to strengthen or improve adolescents' prosocial behaviour. Such interventions include assertiveness training (Ugwuke & Duruji, 2015); self-efficacy and thinking skills (Erozkan, 2013); social skills training (Spence 2003): self-esteen and peer influence (Ogunboyede & Agokei, 2015) to mention but a few. Hine (2013) investigates the development of relationship among gender and prosocial behaviour and found that gender is reliably and strongly linked to childhood and adolescent prosocial behaviour, Agokei and Ogunboyede (2016) examine the influence of self-esteem, peer influence, and parental involvement among in-school adolescents and found that peer influence and parental involvement affect the prosocial behaviour of the in-school adolescents in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Social skills, as affirmed by Ayodele (2011), are interpersonal behaviours that help to improve the efficiency and efficacy of individuals who are part of a large group of individuals. Social skills training is the behaviour that facilitates and maintains prosocial behaviour. Since prosocial behaviour, according to Ogunboyede and Agokei (2016), is a relevant positive behaviour to approve the development of adolescents, adolescents should acquire these skills for positive interaction in society. However, adolescents whose emotions and behaviour cannot be regulated are more likely to have problems in their relationships, hence the need for Social Skills Training (SST) as a measure to encourage interpersonal relationships and prosocial behaviour among senior secondary school students in Lagos State, Nigeria.
Rani (2019) emphasises social skills as the strength of an individual's success. These aid him in gaining new experiences and strengthening his inherent abilities to enhance his performance in a range of fields. Good social skills are essential for a person's successful functioning in life. He gains knowledge on how to behave in a variety of settings and make wise decisions as a result of gaining these abilities. Akintude (2017) corroborates this by saying that Social Skills Training (SST) increases the willingness to perform important social behaviour that is essential in achieving a favourable outcome in some social circumstances.
Social skill training is a method that is used to develop a good social relationship among people. For example Social Skills Training programme can increase the quality of adolescents' interpersonal relationship and prosocial behaviour by addressing the aspect of the relationship that is most problematic. Various researchers have used social skills training to treat different problematic behaviours, which range from several disorder. Rani (2019)  Social skills training as a therapy has been used to improve interpersonal relationships and prosocial behaviour among adolescents and the results have been long-lasting. For example, Ayodele (2011) in a study conducted on adolescents in Nigeria, came out with the findings that Social skill training leads to positive improvement in interpersonal relationship among adolescents. Olanrewaju and Aliyu (2017) also claim that there is a significant effect of social skills training on prosocial behaviour of adolescents. Tahereh (2013) claim that social skills training plays an important role in increasing shared relationship among children and adolescents, and thus allows total quality of life to be well developed. They affirm that it facilitates the acquisition of freedom in life and the adaptation to various life circumstances. Also in a study carried out by Schippers, Merillas and Marker, (2015) on social skill training, prosocial behaviours and aggression on incarcerated offenders, it was discovered that there is a significant rise in size of social understanding and social interaction of the participants. Thus, social skills training will give an adolescent the understanding of himself, others, and his society at large (Ayodele, 2014).
Social learning theory has inspired the present research on prosocial behaviour. The theory addresses the idea that adolescents learn about their environments and how to work within them by direct peer tutelage as well as by watching each other. Therefore, they disregard non-normative social behaviour, and concentrate instead on rewarding or improving certain activities that are viewed as socially desirable and competent. This theory assists in the acquisition of more effective behaviour and skills to improve or reinforce prosocial behaviour among adolescents in senior secondary schools in Lagos State. Against this background, this study looked at how well adolescents' behaviour was strengthened or improved by their social skills. and also aimed to establish the effects of gender on prosocial behaviour of students in the secondary school.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
We all continuously look forward to living in an ideal state where things are in order, where everybody does what is right. But we are far from that situation due to the behavioural decadence in human societies. The teenage stage has been associated with turbulence and as a result of this, many of the relationships of adolescents have shown maladaptive behaviours and disorders that always require psychological interventions. Such behaviours include, unruly behaviours, bullying, fighting, disrespect for elders, lack of care for others, among others.
In today's society, adolescents display lack of consideration and positive outcomes for others everywhere they are in all nations of the world, including Nigeria. One of the reasons most adolescents, especially in secondary schools, find themselves in messy situations according to literature is their lack of prosocial behaviour. Vanguard Crime Alert of August 13, 2020 reported a kidnap gang of teenagers who adopted a 6-year-old boy for a ransom of 1 million naira in Bauch, Nigeria. The four-kidnap gang members aged between 16 and 19 years were arrested by the police after their plot was foiled and the kidnapped boy was rescued. Many studies have been conducted out using different therapies to enhance prosocial behaviour among adolescents resulting in varying degrees of success. However, the cases of antisocial behaviour among adolescents remain endemic, indicating that there is a need for efforts to provide the necessary treatments.
Although social skills training has been reported to be a potent therapy aimed at behavioural modification, there is little empirical research on its application to promote prosocial behaviour, especially among adolescents in senior secondary schools. Against this background, this research work examined the effectiveness of social skills in strengthening senior secondary school students' prosocial behaviour in Lagos State.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The study sought to accomplish two key objectives. To: 1. Investigate the effectiveness of social skill training on the prosocial behaviour of the senior secondary students. 2. Determine whether the moderating role of gender would have an effect on the prosocial behaviour of the senior secondary students.

Research Design
In the study, a pre-test-post-test control group experimental design was used. There were two rows with the control group and one-treatment techniques for Social Skills Training (SST). Also, there were two columns that indicated if the participants were male or female. The factorial design was chosen by the researcher because it allows for the completion of an experiment that would otherwise need two or more distinct experiments. (Aron, Coups and Aron, 2013).

Population and Sample
The population for the study comprised all the adolescents in senior secondary 2 in Lagos State. The sample consisted of one hundred twenty (120) students in the second year of secondary school (SS 2) students who were selected by simple random sampling from two randomly selected public secondary schools in the three senatorial districts of the state. A sample of 120 students was chosen through the multi-stage random sampling technique. The first step included choosing two local government areas from among the twenty (20) local government areas in the three senatorial districts using the stratified random selection technique. On equal-sized pieces of paper, the names of the LGAs were written. They were evenly folded and placed in the three bowls that had the names of the senatorial districts written on them. After thorough re-shuffling of the contents of the bowls, the researcher picked one Local Government Area from each bowl. The local government areas chosen from this process were Lagos Mainland Local Government of Lagos Central Senatorial District and Ikorodu Local Government of Lagos East Senatorial District.
The second stage involves utilising a straightforward random sampling technique to choose a secondary school from each of the chosen local government areas. The same procedure used in selecting the local government areas was also followed in selecting the two secondary schools.
After obtaining permission from the school authority of each of the selected schools, the researcher, thereafter administered the prosocial behaviour questionnaires to all the senior secondary school (SS2) students. Only respondents who had low mean scores in each of the selected schools were selected as participants in the study. One school constituted the experimental group, while the other school constituted the control school. The entire Senior Secondary School 2 at the public secondary schools in Lagos State made up the study's population. From two co-educational schools, a total of one hundred and twenty (120) students were chosen at random. Between fourteen (14) and nineteen (19) years old. The participants were divided into the treatment group and the control group using slips with the letters A and B inscribed separately on them to assign them into the two groups.

Instruments for Data Collection
A standardised instrument titled 'Prosocial Behaviour Scale' by Afolabi (2013) was used to measure prosocial tendencies to collect data for the study. The data were analysed using Analysis of Covariance. (ANCOVA). It contains 12 items on a four-point Likert-type instrument with responses ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree. The instrument was used to measure the level of prosocial behaviour of the participants. Sample items on the scale include: "I enjoy helping others" and "At any cost, I can help a dying person to the hospital". The developer reported that the scale has coefficient alpha of between .81 and .89, test-retest reliability of .77, and a split-half reliability coefficient of .72 in a sample of Nigerian undergraduates. Afolabi (2014) used the PBS in his study of the influence of self-esteem and family relations on prosocial behaviour and social adjustment of adolescent in Nigeria and observed that scores on the PBS were significantly and positively associated with measures of self-esteem (r = .365, p < .05) and family relations (r = .417, p < .05). This confirms the congruent validity of the scale.

Procedure for Data Collection
The study was carried out in the following three stages: 1. Pre-treatment stage: it involved a familiarisation visit to the three chosen schools, with a focus on general introduction and rapport-building as well as administration of Prosocial Behaviour Scale (PBS) to all the SS2 students and also pretest to determine the baseline score. In addition, 120 participants were chosen using a simple random selection technique. 2. The treatment Session: Participants in the experimental group underwent treatment for eight (8) weeks. The control group took part in pre-and post-testing but received just a placebo on of English language instruction. The experimental group's participants received social skills training. The treatment has eight session of the therapy. 3. Post-treatment Session: This is the evaluation phase. Both the experimental and control groups underwent a post-test using the same PBC at the end of the eight (8) week training period to evaluate the results.

Method of Data Analysis
Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to examine the data and test the hypothesis at 0.05 significant level. The statistical tool was used to examine the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable and the control group.

RESULTS
Hypothesis 1: There is no significant main effect of social skills (treatments) on prosocial behaviour among the participants.   Table 2 shows F-value for the treatment (F(4,1) =28.991, P<0.05). It follows that there is significant main effect of treatment on prosocial behaviour among senior secondary school students in Lagos State. The partial eta square 0.209 which represents the effect size is a small value which indicates that though the effect is significant, it is not much. The pairwise comparison table below shows the treatment that is more effective. Based on estimated marginal means *. The mean difference is significant at the .05 level. b. Adjustment for multiple comparisons: Least Significant Difference (equivalent to no adjustments). Table 3 reveals that when the mean for the control group is deduced from that of the Social skills group, the result is 5.143 which is positive. This value is also significant at 0.05. It follows that the social skills group significantly affected prosocial behaviour than the control group. The chart below further explains this. From the Figure 1, while the marginal mean for the control group is 36.395, that of the social skills group is 41.538.

Hypothesis 2:
There is no significant main effect of gender on prosocial behaviour of senior secondary school students in Lagos State.  Table 4 shows F-value for the treatment (F(4,1) =8.272, P<0.05). It follows that there is significant main effect of gender on prosocial behaviour among senior secondary school students in Lagos State. The partial eta square 0.070 representing the effect size is a very small value which indicates that though the effect is significant, it is not much. The pairwise comparison table below shows the treatment that is more effective.  Table 5 reveals that when the mean for female is deducted from that of male, the result is 2.722 which is positive. This value is also significant at 0.05. It follows that male participants significantly affected prosocial behaviours than females. The chart below further confirms this.

Figure 2: Estimated Marginal Means of PBSPOST on Genger
From figure 2, while the marginal mean for male is 40.327, that of female is 37.605.

Hypothesis 3:
There is no significant interaction effect of treatment and gender on prosocial behaviour of senior secondary school students in Lagos State.  Table 6 shows F-value for the treatment (F(4,1) = 0.034, P>0.05). It follows that there is no significant interaction effect of treatments and gender on prosocial behaviour among senior secondary school students in Lagos State. The partial eta square 0.000 which represents the effect size shows no effect.

DISCUSSIONS
The result of the study showed that there was a significant main effect of social skills training (treatment) on prosocial behaviour of adolescents. From the result of the analysis and presented in  table  1  and  2and  the  Pairwise  Comparisons test on treatment on table 3, this hypothesis could not be upheld. It was found that the treatment packages, social skills training, had significant effects on the participants' prosocial behaviour. The participants in the experimental group performed better than other participants in the control group. This is mainly due to the fact that the members of the experimental group have access to the intervention programme. Whereas The control group's participants did not get any kind of treatment; instead, they took part in activities unrelated to those that the other group underwent. This means that social skills training had a significant effect on adolescents, as evident in the post-test scores of prosocial behaviour of the experimental groups. The plausible explanation for this finding is that the intervention (SST) allowed participants to know themselves, show concern about the way their relationships are with others, set achievable goals for themselves, and manage their lives leading to enhanced prosocial behaviour. It has been discovered that social skill training helps people learn socially acceptable behaviour that promotes prosocial behaviour and allows them to avoid or escape uncomfortable situations (Olanrewaju & Aliu, 2017), This result is also consistent with Akintunde (2017) in a study on social withdrawal behaviour among secondary school students in Federal Capital Territory (FCT), found out that social skills training and transactional analysis are significant in improving social withdrawal behaviours among adolescents in Nigeria with social skills training becoming more potent. Olaz, Medirano & Canillas (2014) in another study on effectiveness of social skills training method in strengthening prosocial behaviour of university students found out at the end of the study that there is a significant effect of social skills training on prosocial behaviour of the participants.
The result also revealed that there was a significant main effect of gender on prosocial behaviour of adolescents. Table  4shows the four significant tests and they are all significant at 0.05, (P<0.05). The null hypothesis was rejected by these findings because there was a significant main effect of gender on prosocial behaviours of senior secondary school students in Lagos State. The result here indicates that gender had significant effect on treatments, which makes the hypothesis not acceptable. The results also according to the pairwise comparison table 5 show that the male participants significantly affected pro-social behaviours than the females. This corresponds to the assertion of Imhonde (2014) that one of the influencing behaviours of adolescents is gender. The result is also in tandem with Ugoji and Ebenuwa (2015) who reported in their study that gender is one of the influences of juvenile delinquencies. The outcome of their study revealed that gender significantly affects conduct disorders of adolescents in secondary students in southeastern Nigeria. However, this result contradicts Solomon (2015) who did a research at Addis Abeba University on the interaction between parental style, peer pressure, and teenage prosocial behaviour and found no evidence of a gender effect on participants.
The result also revealed that there was no significant interaction effect of treatment and gender on prosocial behaviour of senior secondary students in Lagos State. This result confirms the hypothesis according to the findings as presented in table 6. This finding implies that the prosocial behaviour of participants would not be significantly impacted by gender in a treatment interaction, although there was a significant main effect of treatment on the prosocial behaviour of the participants in the earlier result. This result substantiates the finding of Aderanti and Hassan (2011) who found no significant main effects of gender and treatment on the scores of participants' rebelliousness and selfmanagement among adolescents. Ayodele (2011), in an experimental study on intra and interpersonal relationship of adolescents, revealed that there was no significant main effect of gender difference in effect of treatment on the participants. He asserted that outcome variables like behavioural change do not always directly relate to gender. The discovery of this study is consistent with prior studies indicating a similar inclination (Nlemedin & Faleye, 2013).

CONCLUSION
This study investigated the effectiveness of Social Skills Training (SST) on prosocial behaviours of adolescents in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study was interested in evaluating the extent to which adolescents in senior secondary school would be improved by developing a sound personality, maintaining good relationships and sound social support in their daily activities with social skills training strategies. It also went further to examine whether gender would have moderating effects on the outcome of the study. From the study, it is evident that adolescents exhibit countless disapproved behaviours and are unable to begin friendly relationship, do not understand and respect social norms, find it difficult to help, assist, share things with and accept others, have cold feelings towards others, have problems in communicating with others.
Many of these are evident in their relationship with parents at home, teachers and peers in the school. The outcomes have demonstrated that the treatment plans can be utilised as effective tools to give young people the necessary skills to foster positive relationships with others and be good to people around without expecting rewards in return. Thus, these can bring about a better and more peaceful co-existence among the world's people; however, through the acquisition of appropriate social and communication skills, their prosocial behaviours became enhanced.

RECOMMENDATIONS
As a result of these findings and the conclusion reached, the following recommendations are made: 1. The introduction of Social Skills Training should start from the later childhood to enable adolescents to grow with it, be versed in it, and develop the required skills for effective relationship.

2.
The government should make the provision of professional school counsellors mandatory as a matter of urgency in all public and private schools in the National Policy on Education provisions. Social skills are important skills because they are the foundation of all other skills that young people need to succeed in life. Hence more scientific researches must be encouraged and promoted to facilitate success in both academic and social learning of adolescents.

3.
Experts in Counseling/Educational Psychology should make more efforts to organise seminars and conferences on the necessity of these interventions as an effective measure in improving prosocial behaviour among adolescents in secondary schools. Students should be encouraged to develop and/or participate in school volunteer service groups.