ABSTRACT

This study determined the correlation between marital conflicts and social adjustment of senior secondary school students in Abia State. The study adopted a correlation survey research design. 5 research questions and 5 null hypotheses were used for the study. The sample for the study was 878 students drawn from a population of 8783 senior secondary II students in Abia state using simple sampling procedure. Out of the 878 copies of the instruments distributed, 860 copies which represented 97% of the copies administered were well-filled and were used for data analysis. The three instruments for data collection were a 21-item questionnaire titled: Moral adjustment Questionnaire (MAQ), a 44-item Social Adjustment Questionnaire (SAQ) and a 30-item Marital Conflict Questionnaire (MCQ). The instruments were validated by three experts, two from Psychology and counselling and one from measurement and evaluation, all from College of Education, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. Pearson product moment correlation coefficient was used to determine the reliability of the instruments while Cronbach Alpha statistic was used to determine their internal consistency. These yielded 0.723, 0.841 and 0.742 coefficients for the reliability of MAQ, SAQ and MCQ respectively as well as 0.764, 0.773 and 0.676 for internal consistencies of MAQ, SAQ and MCQ respectively. Pearson product moment correlation coefficient was used to answer the five research questions raised for the study while linear regression analysis was used to test the five null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed among others that Marital conflicts significantly to a very high extent correlate with moral adjustment and social adjustment of senior secondary school students respectively. It equally showed that there was no significant relative contribution of gender on the relationship between marital conflicts and students’ moral and social adjustments respectively among others.  The study therefore concluded that marital conflicts to a very high extent correlate with the moral and social adjustments of senior secondary schools in Abia state. Based on the findings and conclusion, the study recommended among others that Government and school proprietors should employ and have at least a Psychologist or a school Counsellor to guide students identified to have moral adjustment challenges among others.