Maladaptive behaviour of secondary school students in Imo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of parenting styles and family status on proneness to maladaptive behaviour of secondary school students in Imo State, Nigeria. Two hypotheses were posed to guide the study. The design of the study is pre-test post-test quasi experimental design. Simple random sampling technique was used to select three secondary school II (SSS 2) and the same sampling procedure was adopted for the selection of 40 students from each Senior Secondary School II (SSS 2).The total number of 120 students participated in the study. Three instruments were used namely; Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRPS), Parenting Style Questionnaire (PSQ) and Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Scale (PCL-RS) with the reliability coefficient values of 0.89, 0.79 and 0.81 respectively. The data obtained were analysed using both Descriptive and Inferential Statistics for each hypothesis and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The result from the study revealed that one of the hypotheses was accepted whereas one was rejected. The study showed that there is no significant difference in proneness to maladaptive behaviour among participants based on family status. The result also revealed that there is a significant difference in parenting styles among participants in the three experimental groups. It has demonstrated that self-control intervention technique was more efficacious than the cognitive restructuring in handling issues of proneness to maladaptive behaviour. One of the recommendations was that parents should bring their teenagers much closer to themselves so that they would not be exposed to their peers who may negatively influence them.

Keywords: Parenting styles, Family status, Experimental conditions, and maladaptive behaviour.