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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1453321

Antecedents of Academic Actual Help-Seeking Behaviour and Support Services Utilization among Distance Education Students

Provisionally accepted
Moses Segbenya Moses Segbenya *Beatrice Asante Somuah Beatrice Asante Somuah Paul Dela Ahiatrogah Paul Dela Ahiatrogah Brandford Bervell Brandford Bervell
  • University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The purpose of the study was to unravel the determinants that necessitate academic help-seeking intentions and promote the utilization of support services among distance education students. This study adopted a quantitative approach based on cross-sectional survey design. The target population of the study comprised all distance education students of the College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select a sample of 290 respondents for the study. The main data collection instrument was a questionnaire and the data was collected from June to December, 2023. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were used to analyse preliminary data, while the main data was analysed by structural equation modelling technique. The study found that social support, subjective needs, and availability of help were the antecedents of actual academic help-seeking behaviour among distance learners. Depressive needs were not considered as an antecedent of help-seeking behaviour. Thus, social support, subjective needs, and availability of help were significantly related to actual help-seeking behaviour among distance learners. The study further found that actual help-seeking behaviour among distance learners was also significantly related to the actual use of support services available to these learners. Finally, actual help-seeking behaviour among distance learners significantly mediated the relationship between social support, subjective needs, availability of help, and actual use of support services available to distance students. It was therefore recommended that authorities of distance education should make support services available to distance learners online and in-person to be able to meet the needs of different categories of students as well as the provisions of platforms for building social support systems among distance learners.

    Keywords: Academic actual help-seeking behaviour, Antecedents, support services utilization, Distance education students, Help-seeking behaviour

    Received: 24 Jun 2024; Accepted: 23 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Segbenya, Somuah, Ahiatrogah and Bervell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Moses Segbenya, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.