A Decision Support System For Counselling :An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Aproach.

Decision Support Systems (DSS) are computer-based information systems designed to help managers to select one of t6he many alternative solutions to a problem. Put differently DSS are built to facilitate the decision-making process by process by people in institutions when the need arises. Studies have shown that there is a high rate of abuse of drug among students in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. This research is therefore an attempt to develop a decision support system (DSS) that can be useful for counselling students who have drug problem using the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) model. Using the DSS developed in this study, we were able to compute Eigen vectors of the matrix of pair -wise comparison in generalized ascending order of magnitude. The highest Eigen vector was selected as the most effective method of counselling students with drug problems. The system was implemented using PHP and MySQL database. This study shows that the counselling methods such a s interview, behavior modification and counselling which refers the students to an expert, all have the same Eigen vector. That is to say that they are of equal importance with the criteria used in counselling the student. The study also revealed that 'Reward' as an approach to counselling with respect to behavioral modification has the highest priority value which is 0.6687. 'Denial' and 'Punishment' have the priority value of 0.2431 and 0.0882 respectively. In conclusion, from our findings, the best choice for counselling student with respect to behavior medication is the 'Reward Approach'.