Prevention and Management of Automobile Workshop Accidents in Technical Colleges in Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was designed to assess the prevention and management of automobile workshop accidents in technical colleges in Niger State, Nigeria. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 41 comprising of 27 experienced and 14 less experienced automobile teachers from all seven Technical Colleges in Niger State. Entire population was studied; hence there was no need for the adoption of any sampling technique because the population for the study was of manageable size. A structured questionnaire developed by the researchers was used for the study, named Prevention Management of Automobile Workshop Accidents Questionnaire (PMAWAQ). The questionnaire was validated by three experts from Department of Industrial and Technology Education FUT Minna. Cronbach Alpha method was used to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items. Thus, a reliability coefficient of 0.95 was obtained. The questionnaire was assigned four points rating scale as follows; Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree with values of 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively. The questionnaire return rate was 95.4%. Mean and Standard Deviation were used to analyzed the data for answering the research questions; while t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. For answering research questions, any item with a mean response of 2.50 and above was considered Agree while any item with mean response below 2.50 was considered as Disagree. For testing the null hypotheses, any item with significant p-value of 0.05 and below is considered significant while any item with significant p-value above 0.05 is considered not significant. It was found that eleven types of accidents frequently occurred in Automobile Workshops Technical Colleges in Niger State; eight mechanisms should be adopted in the management of automobile workshop in technical colleges in Niger State. The study recommended that safety equipment such as fire extinguishers, first aid box and workshop coat should be provided adequately in the workshops and workshop personnel with good and training habit should be employed.