Assessment of the Behavioural Academic Engagement of Undergraduates Involved in Drug Abuse in South West, Nigeria

There are controversies in the literature concerning the academic disposition of undergraduates involved in drug abuse, as previous studies are faulted based on biased perceptions and methodology. This study, through a methodology of incomplete disclosure of purpose, assessed the academic engagement of undergraduates involved in drug abuse in Southwest Nigeria. This study adopted a descriptive survey design and sampled 947 undergraduates involved in drug abuse through purposive, accidental, snowball techniques. Data were collected through an adapted two-section academic engagement self-reporting scale with a reliability coefficient of 0.91. These data were analyzed using Percentage, Analysis of Variance, and t-test statistics at a 0.05 significance level. The findings of the study were that the academic engagement of undergraduates involved in drug abuse was average; there was no significant difference in academic engagement of undergraduates involved in drug abuse based on academic level; there was no significant difference in the academic engagement of undergraduates involved in drug abuse based on university type; there was a significant difference in academic engagement of male and female undergraduates involved in drug abuse; and there was no significant difference in academic engagement of on-campus and off-campus undergraduates involved in drug abuse. The study concluded that the academic engagement of undergraduates involved in drug abuse was average. This implies that stakeholders’ negative perception of the academics of undergraduates involved in drug abuse is sometimes untrue and pre-conceived. The study recommended that undergraduates involved in drug abuse should neither be rusticated nor written off as an academic misfit but rather be rehabilitated.