The Influence Of The Physical School Environment On The Academic Performance Of Secondary School Students
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, KWARA STATE.]

CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHOD
Research Design
The research design for this study is descriptive survey research design, primarily concerned with findings, describing and interpreting the outcomes obtained. Umoru (2012) defined descriptive research as a research that determines and report the way things are. It involves assessing attitude or opinion toward individuals, organizations, events, or procedure. Descriptive studies consider sample from a population to discover incidences and interrelations with a view to generalizing for that population. According to Saka (2011) descriptive research is one that collects information from a specific group and draw inferences.
This study is not intended to examine new phenomenon but concerned with relation or condition that already exists. It is both a quantitative and qualitative research where social scientific analysis method was handy.
Population of the Study
The population of this study consists of Secondary School Students from five (5) public and five (5) private Secondary Schools within Ilorin West Local Government Area, Kwara State, Nigeria. A practicable feasible population was drawn for the study from the total population of each school with a consideration of assuming a finite number for each School irrespective of their individual population. There was no particular preference for a specific demographic index to determine the population of the study. As a result, a total of 250 Secondary School Students formed the total population that were identified for the exercise.
Sample and Sampling Technique
The sample is taking a portion of the population out of many to represent and generalize the whole. Therefore, respondents were selected from 10 different secondary schools, mainly five (5) public and five (5) private within Ilorin West Local Government. Simple random sampling was used because the study intended to select a representative without being biased from the accessible population. This ensured that each member of the target population had an equal and independent chance of being included in the sample. Therefore, a total of 250 students formed the total sample size that participated in the study.
Research Instrument
The instrument used for this study is a questionnaire. The designed questionnaire is tagged Influence of school Physical Environment Questionnaire (IPEQ); it consisted of six (6) sections. The first section contain questions related to demographic information of respondents. The second section contain questions related to basic information on the School type, the third (3rd) to sixth (6th) sections were questions directed to Students on the School environment and location, Library facilities, the availability of classrooms and recreational facilities and how each of these factors affect the Student.
Validity and Reliability of the Instrument
    The validity of an instrument is all about the exactness to which a test, measures what it is supposed to measure. The draft questionnaire was presented to the researcher’s supervisor in the Department of Educational Management to cross check for contents validity. Corrections made by the lecturer were effected in the final production of the instrument.
Procedure for Data Analysis
A high return rate mechanism of administered questionnaires was implemented and open ended questions were completely avoided to sharpen the focus of the study. The data collected was first coded and later analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science International Business Machine (IBM-SPSS), version 20. The data analyzed is explained in three forms: demographic information, descriptive analysis and inferential analysis.
Method of Data Analysis
The analysis of data was presented in three forms; Demographic characteristic, descriptive analysis and inferential analysis. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the five (5) research questions posed for the study. Chi-squares and t-tests statistic was used in testing the five (5) hypotheses formulated at 0.05 level of significant.