Journal of Psychology & Behavioral Science

Effects of Assertive Training on the Low Self-Esteem of Secondary School Students in Anambra State
Ada Anyamene ; Nwokolo Chinyelu ; Ezeani, Nneka

Abstract
The problem of low-self-esteem in secondary schools has been a source of worry because of its attendant consequences on the students, teachers, guidance counsellors, parents and the society at large. The students with low self esteem lack social skills and are usually unassertive, internalize feelings making them fight over minor provocations, flaunting school rules and regulations, all in bid to appear tough, while indeed they are merely masking their feelings of low self-esteem. These undesirable manifestations militate against the fulfilment of their potentials and calls for urgent attention. Many methods have been applied by the school and homes to help such students, but have yielded no result. The purpose of the study is to determine the effect of assertive training on low self-esteem of secondary school students in Anambra State. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The design of the study is true experimental, randomized, pretest-posttest, control design. The population of the study is two hundred and fifty (250) SS II students with low self-esteem. The sample size consisted of forty-seven (47) SSS II students with low self-esteem purposively selected from two co-educational secondary schools in Awka metropolis. Instrument for data collection was the questionnaire “Index of Self-Esteem” (ISE) by Hudson (1982) revalidated for Nigerian use by Omoluabi (1997). The reliability co-efficient of the instrument is 0.92. The training period lasted 6 weeks, two sessions per week; each session lasted for 40 minutes. Both groups were pre-tested with ISE. After the treatment, both groups were post tested with same ISE after being reshuffled. Statistical score was used to answer the research questions while ANCOVA was used to test the hypotheses. The findings include that assertive training has effect on the low self-esteem of the students by enhancing their selfesteem. Also there is no significant difference in the effect of assertive training on low self-esteem of male and female students. Based on the findings, recommendations were made, among which was that counsellors should always expose every student to assertive training irrespective of their gender so as to help them interact better with themselves and others. The training is effective for both sexes, so awareness of this training should be created for parents in Parents Teachers Association (PTA) on the need to encourage their wards at home to practise the skills.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jpbs.v4n1a7