SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Guidance And Counselling

CONTRIBUTORS:

Ejichukwu, E.C;
Anyamene, Ada

ABSTRACT:

The students, especially those at the secondary school level of education globally are many a time predisposed to numerous social adjustment concerns. It has become a worrisome situation because of its tendency to affect their academic outputs and the likelihood that they may resort to anti-social behaviours like drug use and abuse, robbery, alcoholism, among others. This study in essence investigated personality traits and self-efficacy as predictors of social adjustment of secondary school students in Anambra state. Fourteen research questions guided the study while seven null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Correlational research design was adopted for this study. The population of the study comprise 40,161 SS1 and SS2 students’ from which a sample size of 2,400 students was selected using simple random sampling and disproportionate stratified random sampling techniques. Three sets of instruments, namely Personality Traits Assessment Questionnaire (PTAQ), General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSS) and Social Adjustment Scale (SAS) were used for the study. The instruments are standardized questionnaires which have been previously validated by experts and used in conducting studies in Nigeria. They were adopted for this study.The reliability of the instrument are as follows: The instrument has reliability coefficient of 0.87 for GSS. The reliability coefficient for the five facets of personality trait assessment scale (PTAS) were extraversion,0.930; neuroticism, 0.883; openness to experience, 0.786; agreeableness, 0.648; and conscientiousness, 0.903. Coefficient alpha of 0.864 was established for general self-efficacy scale (GSS) and 0.869 for Social Adjustment Questionnaire (SAQ). Data was collected through direct delivery method. Data collected were analyzed using range of scores, percentages and regression analysis. The findings of the study revealed among others that the personality traits of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness to experience and Agreeableness significantly predicted student’s social adjustment in Anambra State. However, Conscientiousness personality trait did not significantly predict social adjustment of the students. Also, the big five personality trait and self-efficacy were shown to have jointly predicted the social adjustment of secondary school students. It was recommended among others that school guidance counsellors should be equipped with necessary tools both material and intellectual to enable them render useful counselling services that would go a long way in helping to build the self-efficacy of students with neurotic personality trait so that students with the neurotic personality trait.