Factors Influencing Secondary School Students to Steal and Their Need for Guidance and Counselling in Bungoma West District, Bungoma County in Kenya

The safety of both members of the society and their property is central for harmonious coexistence, therefore this study investigated the factors influencing secondary school students to steal and their need for guidance and counseling. Theft among secondary school students is on high increase and persisting among indiscipline cases in secondary schools. The Kenya Government through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology basing on previous researches has recommended guidance and counseling as the alternative means to punishment in dealing with students maladaptive behaviors and matters of indiscipline in secondary schools. Both the Transactional Analysis Theory of Eric Berne and Psychoanalysis Theory of Sigmund Freud were used to give theoretical framework of this study. The study used the descriptive survey design. Principals, teacher counselors and form two students of public secondary schools were the targeted population. Purposive sampling procedure was used to select the six principals and six teacher counselors from sample schools. While the 25 respondent students from each school were chosen using the stratified random sampling procedure. Six secondary schools (35 %) were selected out of seventeen secondary schools in Bungoma West District. The secondary schools selected were Chwele Girls High School, Karibuni Girls Secondary School, Kaptanai Mixed and Day Secondary School, St. Antony Sirisia Boys High School, Butonge ACK Boys High School and Lwandanyi Secondary School. Questionnaires were used as the research instrument to collect data. Data collected was coded and entered in the computer for analysis. Descriptive statistics such as percentages, frequency distributions and means were used to summarize the data with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Data was presented in tables, histograms and pie charts.