Effects of Premarital Counselling on Students' Attitude Towards Marriage

Abstract

The study examined the effects of premarital counselling on students' attitudes towards marriage. The study adopted quasi-experimental of the pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design, involving two intact groups. A sample of 161 senior secondary three (SS III) students randomly drawn from four secondary schools in Umuahia Education Zone of Abia State served as the subjects of the study. The subjects in each of the two groups were tested before and after the treatment sessions, which lasted for six weeks. Intact classes of SS III students in the four sampled schools were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group was treated with premarital counselling programme while the control group received treatment on the conventional school guidance programme. The major finding was that premarital counselling had a significant effect on students' attitude towards marriage. The implications of these findings for guidance and counselling were highlighted and recommendations made.

The Nigerian Journal of Guidance Counselling Vol. 10 (1) 2005: pp. 95-104