Utilization Evaluation of ICTs Based Climate Change Information Sourcing for Households Agricultural Adaptation Practices in the Cross River Basin, Nigeria

This study evaluated the use of ICT for climate change information sourcing among secondary school students and how it Influences their household agricultural practices in Cross River Basin, Nigeria between January, 2013 and November, 2013. The survey research employed multi-stage sampling technique in the selection of the respondents. Secondary schools in the two states constituting Cross River Basin (Akwa Ibom and Cross River States) were clustered into three senatorial districts in each of the state. Thereafter, simple random sampling technique was used to select both the schools and students in each of the senatorial district. Well designed Questionnaires were administered on the 200 Senior Secondary School Students selected for the study. Frequencies, percentages, independent T-test and simple regression analysis were employed to analyse the data. On the extent to which the respondents sourced for climate change information, findings indicated that 31% of the respondents lowly sourced for climate change information, 36% averagely and 33% highly sourced for climate change information. The results also revealed that the respondents mostly (71%) used textbooks, newsletters (57%), newspaper/magazines (52%) and radio/television (67%) to source for climate change information. Thirty three percent of the respondents provided low level advocacy on climate change adaptation farming practices to their households, 34% provided average level of advocacy and 33% fell into the high advocacy level. Findings from the study also revealed that female students did more advocacy on climate change adaptation farming practices to their households with a mean index of 0.6956 more than male students with a mean index of 0.6478 and the difference was statistically significant at P=.001. Extent of utilization of climate change information sources significantly influenced on the family advocacy on climate change. This study revealed that utilization of ICT to source for climate change information and students’ gender in some ways influence contributions to household agricultural practices among senior secondary school agricultural science students in Cross River Basin. Students need to be strongly exposed to the usage of more information tools so as to improve their degree of climate change information sourcing.