Emotional Openness and Attitudes Towards Self-disclosure During Counseling among Junior Secondary School Students in Anaocha Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study empirically investigates the correlation between emotional openness and attitudes towards self-disclosure, it also investigated the relationship between clients’ sociocultural background and attitudes towards self-disclosure during counseling sessions. The sample comprised 400 male and female students who were randomly selected from 8 Junior Secondary Schools in Anaocha LGA of Anambara State, Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance and correlation analysis were adopted to analyze the data. .The study found a significant relationship exist between emotional openness and attitudes of Junior Secondary School students towards self-disclosure during counseling sessions, The finding also reveals a significant correlation between the sociocultural background of the students and attitude towards self-disclosure during counseling sessions. This study concludes that female students assign lower levels of emotional openness towards self-disclosure during counseling sessions compared to male students. Again, the results also reveals that, majority of the  students prefer to disclose their personal problems with counselors they share the same cultural identity with. Therefore, this study recommends that government should put forward several in-service training and workshops including conferences aimed at increasing counsellor skills to reduce low self disclosure among clients during counselling. .The study also recommends that, the government; the private sectors as well as Non-governmental Organizations should intensify efforts to improve counselors-students ratios across all the Junior Secondary Schools in the study location.