Archives of Current Research International

In practice, particularly in resource-limited laboratory environments, internationally certified reference materials may be financially inaccessible, matrix-mismatched, or simply unavailable for the specific analytical matrix of interest. In response to this reality, many laboratories resort to the preparation of in-house or House Reference Materials (HRMs) materials prepared internally and used repeatedly within the same facility for quality control purposes. This study investigated the impact of sensitizing science teachers on quality control in science laboratories using Standard Reference Materials (SRM) and House Reference Materials (HRM) in secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Survey design was used for the study. To ensure that schools and science teachers were fairly represented in the population, a two stage sampling technique was used. In the first stage, ten (10) out of the total public secondary schools which constitute the larger population of schools in the metropolis, was randomly selected with simple random sampling method. This made the selection as much as possible unbiased as every school had an equal chance of being selected. Ten (10) science teachers with each having backgrounds in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Agricultural Science, Further Mathematics, Computer Science, Health Education, Basic Science, Technical Drawing, were randomly selected from each school through simple random sampling in the second stage. This approach allowed for equal chances of being selected for each science subject teacher in the chosen schools. This multistage random sampling method was deemed suitable as it minimised the cost and time involved and maintained the important benefits of random sampling. It also enabled the sample to be representative enough to reflect differences among schools and within schools across the science teachers, enhancing representativeness and reliability of the findings. Questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection on four-point scale. There was a statistically significant difference (P< 0.05) on the impact of sensitization levels of teachers in the selected schools with teachers who have undergone training on the of Certified or House Reference Materials having higher impact (54 percent) in the improvement of laboratory procedures.   Responses from Forty percent (40%) of the population showed that the use of House Reference Materials improves the reliability of laboratory analytical studies.  However, awareness of teachers on the use of House Reference Materials was low (26 percent) creating a major gap in the optimization of laboratory Analytical Procedures. Overall, this research findings confirmed that sensitization on SRM and HRM helps to improve the quality of laboratory analysis if properly harnessed and utilized, hence the need for local and national teacher training programmes to create awareness and equip Science Teachers with relevant technical support to enhance quality control towards reliability of Laboratory analytical results.