ABSTRACT

This study investigated effect of self-control and relapse prevention techniques on the reduction of bullying behaviour among secondary school students in Imo state. The study adopted a Quasi-experimental design of pretest, posttest and control group using 3x2 factorial matrix. A total of 30 students that were sampled from a population of 483 students identified to have bullying behaviour tendencies in the state were used for the study. These comprised 10 students each for self-control, self-control and relapse prevention and control groups respectively. The study equally adopted multi-staged sampling. The instrument used for data collection was a 22-item questionnaire titled Bullying Identification Questionnaire (BIQ). The instrument was validated by three research experts made up of one from Guidance and Counselling, Educational Psychology and Educational Measurement and Evaluation all in College of Education, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Abia state. Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficients as well as Cronbach alpha statistic were used to test for the stability and internal consistency of the instrument which yielded indices of 0.78 and 0.83 respectively. Data were collected in three phases of pre-treatment phase, post-treatment phase and the follow-up phase. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed among others that Self-control and Relapse prevention techniques combined significantly reduced the bullying behaviour of students in Imo state. It also showed that gender had no significant influence on the reduction behaviour of students exposed to Self-control and relapse prevention techniques. Finally, Self-control and relapse prevention techniques significantly reduced bullying behaviour of students at 4-weeks follow-up. It was concluded that self-control and relapse prevention techniques significantly reduce the bullying behaviour of students in Imo state. Based on the findings, discussion, implication and recommendation were made. One of the recommendations was that teachers who have some identified students with bullying behaviour in their classes could effectively reduce it using self-control and relapse prevention techniques.