Personality Traits (Extraversion and Neuroticism) and Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Secondary School Students’ Psychological Adjustment in Abia State.

Abstract

The study investigated personality traits (extraversion and neuroticism) and self-efficacy as predictors of secondary school students’ psychological adjustment in Abia State. The study was guided by two research questions and two null hypotheses which were tested at 0.05 level of significance. A correlation research design was adopted for the study. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 600 sample size from the population of 2500 SS2 students in Abia State. The researchers developed three instruments for data collection namely; “Personality Traits Assessment Questionnaire (PTAQ), Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (SEQ) and Psychological Adjustment Questionnaire (PAQ) which were validated by three experts from Guidance and Counselling and Measurement and Evaluation from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The internal consistency reliability of the instruments were determined using Cronbach Alpha method which yielded reliability coefficients of 0.83, 0.84 and 0.82 for PTAQ, SEQ and PAQ, respectively. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to answer the research questions, while linear and multiple regression analyses were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that: extraversion and neuroticism jointly predicted psychological adjustment of secondary school students to a very high positive and significant extent. Self-efficacy significantly predicted psychological adjustment of secondary school students as it predicted 85.2% of the variance observed in their psychological adjustment. It was recommended among others that teachers should vary their teaching methods to accommodate the personality differences among the learners for their psychological adjustment.