Analytical Study of the Research Gap in Evidence-Based School Counselling Practices in Nigerian Secondary Schools

Evidence-based practice in school counselling requires that counsellors implement interventions with demonstrated empirical support, yet the extent to which research on effective interventions has been produced for, and is applied in, Nigerian secondary school contexts represents a significant but underexamined gap in the counselling literature. This study conducted a systematic gap analysis of evidence-based school counselling research in Nigerian secondary schools. A systematic literature review methodology was employed, searching eight databases for publications from 2015 to 2024 meeting inclusion criteria of empirical evaluation of a counselling intervention in a Nigerian secondary school setting. Seventy-nine eligible publications were identified, representing a low evidence density compared to comparable reviews from sub-Saharan African and South Asian contexts. Thematic analysis of these publications and a survey of 40 practising school counsellors in five geopolitical zones revealed six critical evidence gaps: the near-absence of randomised controlled trials, the concentration of research in South West and South East zones with negligible representation from North East and North West zones, the dominance of stress and academic performance studies at the expense of career guidance and social-emotional learning evaluation, inadequate follow-up measurement beyond immediate post-test, insufficient power calculations in most published studies, and the absence of systematic intervention replication studies. The study constitutes an original contribution to Nigerian school counselling research methodology and recommends a coordinated National School Counselling Research Agenda addressing all six identified gaps.

Keywords: evidence-based school counselling, research gap analysis, Nigeria, systematic review, school mental health