ABSTRACT

This study investigated how adolescent-parental conflict correlates with the self-esteem and academic performance of in-school adolescents’ males and females in Umuahia Education Zone. The design of the study was correlational survey design. 7 research questions and 4 hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study comprised of four thousand and two senior secondary school students in SS1 and SS2. Two hundred male and two hundred female adolescents students were selected using simple random sampling that made up the sample size for the study.   The two major instruments for data collection were Adolescent-parent Conflict Questionnaire (APCQ) and the respondents’ Junior Secondary School Examination Scores. The questionnaire was face validated by given the initial copies to the supervisor and three experts in Psychology, Counselling and Measurement and Evaluation, Micheal Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike. Reliability was established by test retest which yielded a coefficient index of r= 0.81. Copies of the questionnaire were collected directly by hand. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and pearson product-moment correlation statistic. Pearson product-moment correlation co-efficient, ANOVA and simple linear regression were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. The findings of the study showed that Parents inability to trust the adolescent students with responsibilities, parents treating adolescent student like a child, parents feeling adolescent students are lazy with their school works, adolescent students inability to discuss their problems with their parents among others are the causes of adolescent-parental conflict in Umuahia Education Zone. Also, there was a high extent of correlation between adolescent-parental conflict and self-esteem of senior secondary school students. And there was a high extent of correlation between adolescent-parental conflict and academic performance of senior secondary school students. There was a low extent of correlation between adolescent-parental conflict and male and female self-esteem in public secondary schools. It was also concluded that there was a high extent of correlation between adolescent-parental conflict and male adolescents’ academic performance in Secondary Schools. In view of these findings, some recommendations, educational implication of the study and suggestions for further studies were made. The study concluded that adolescent-parental conflict affects self-esteem and academic performance of both male and female senior secondary school students. One of the recommendations was that there is need for school counselors to exposure parents periodically to workshops and seminars on the parenting skills and ethics so as to enhance the development of high self-esteem in adolescent students and also help to eliminate adolescent-parental conflict.