Impact of Insurgency on the Psycho-Social Adjustment of Senior Secondary School Students in North-Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of insurgency on the psycho-social adjustment of senior secondary school students in North-Eastern Nigeria. The study employed descriptive survey as a research design. The population of the study consists of all the senior secondary school III (SSS III) students in North-Eastern Nigeria. Twenty-four (24) schools were randomly selected through simple random sampling from the six States that constitute North-Eastern Nigeria. Three hundred and sixty (360) students made up of 200 males and 160 females were selected through purposive sampling technique to form the sample size (60 students from each State). The instrument was a modified Likert-type questionnaire titled, "Students Psychosocial Adjustment Assessment Questionnaire” (SPAAQ). The instrument was validated by three experts in the Faculty of Education, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nigeria and the internal consistency coefficient obtained was 0.77. The instrument was trial-tested in six independent senior secondary schools selected outside the original sampled 24 schools. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha. The reliability index was found to be 0.74. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics in the form of mean and standard deviation for research questions, z-test was used to test the research hypothesis at alpha=0.05. The findings of the study show that insurgency had positive impact on the rural and urban as well as male and female students' psycho-social adjustment. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that; Therapeutic programmes should be instituted by government with the involvement of trained clinical psychologists to address the psycho-social needs of traumatized students; individual and group psycho-social therapy should be applied along other support measures.