Sources of marital stress experienced by married people as perceived by lecturers of College of Education

Abstract

Stress is the condition that is in place when demands exceed the adaptive capacity of individuals. The study investigated sources of marital stress experienced by married people as perceived by lecturers of College of Education.  Respondents were stratified into different strata of gender, age group, educational qualification and number of children, after which simple random sampling technique was used for selecting 20 respondents from each of the five schools in the college i.e School of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, Science, Vocational Technology and Languages consisting of 42 males and 58 females making a total of 100 respondents. The “Sources of Marital Stress Expericenced by Married People Questionnaire” (SMSEMPQ) was administered to the respondents to collect relevant data. The t-test and Analysis of Variance (  ANOVA) statistics were used to test four generated null hypotheses and where the result of ANOVA showed a significant difference, Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT) statistics was used as a post-hoc test  to determine the group(s) that contributed to the significant difference. All null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The findings showed that the major source of marital stress is “child rearing” with a mean score of 12.88 and ranked 1st while the least source is “social” with a mean score of 11.68 and ranked 8th. The findings equally showed that there was no significant difference in respondents’ perception based on gender while significant differences existed based on age, educational qualification and number of children. Based on the findings, recommendations were made for implementation -   professional counsellors should intensify efforts to set up clinics where people can come for counselling on stress management; the government at all levels ought to establish counselling centres in hospitals where people can come for counselling on stress related matters; and since child rearing has been identified as the most crucial source of stress, parents and guardians ought to be careful in the way they rear children so as to avoid stressful interaction as much as possible. 

Key Words: Sources, marital, stress experienced, married people and lecturers.