EFFECTIVENESS OF ASSERTIVENESS SKILLS TRAINING AND MODELLING IN REDUCING SOCIAL ANXIETY AMONG STUDENTS IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA
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Date
2018
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University of Ilorin
Abstract
Social anxiety has been described as a major threat to the academic success of secondary school students in Nigeria. The less socially anxious a student is, the better is his/her performance in school. Previous studies have shown that social anxiety as a behavioural trait can be modified through counselling. This study therefore, investigated the effectiveness of assertiveness and modelling skills training in reducing social anxiety among secondary school students in Ondo State, Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to determine: (i) whether assertiveness and modelling skills training were effective in reducing social anxiety; (ii) which of the treatment packages of assertiveness or modelling skills training is more effective in reducing social anxiety; (iii) the influence of gender on participants’ level of social anxiety; and (iv) the interaction effect of the treatment groups and gender on social anxiety.
The study adopted a 3 x 2 matrix of quasi-experimental type. The population for the study consisted of all secondary school students in Ondo State. Multi-stage sampling technique comprising simple random, purposive and stratified random sampling was used to select 120 students who participated in the study. There were two treatment groups of Assertiveness Skills Training and Modelling Skills Training and a control group while gender was the only moderating variable. The treatment groups were exposed to 8 weeks training sessions while the control group was exposed to some classroom activities. Social anxiety scale was adapted and used to collect data for the study. The instrument was content validated by experts and has a reliability co-efficient of 0.73.The hypotheses were analysed using Analysis of Covariance at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings of the study were that:
there was a significant difference in the reduction of social anxiety of participants in the treatment groups and those in the control group (F1,116 =1599.784; p<.05);
Assertiveness Skills Training was found to be less effective in reducing social anxiety (X ̅= 73.73) than Modelling Skills Training (X ̅= 69.73);
there was no significant difference in the reduction of social anxiety based on gender; and
there was no significant interaction effect of treatment groups and gender on the level of social anxiety reduction.
The study concluded that assertiveness and modelling skills training are effective in reducing social anxiety among secondary school students but modelling skills training was more effective. This implies that issues related to social anxiety among secondary school students should be of concern to all education stakeholders. It was therefore recommended that counselling psychologists should employ assertiveness and modelling techniques in helping clients identified with social anxiety challenges.
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Keywords
ASSERTIVENESS SKILLS TRAINING, MODELLING, REDUCING SOCIAL ANXIETY, STUDENTS, ONDO STATE