Abstract

Emotional intelligence being one of the expected personality characteristics of counselors is capable of-making or marring the counseling process. This study sought to investigate the extent counsellors' emotional intelligence correlates with counselling seeking behaviour among secondary school students in Abia State. Correlational design was used for the study. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. From the population of 2,524, a sample size of 1600 respondents, comprising 1548 SS2 students and 52 school counsellors was drawn. Multi-stage sampling techniques were employed to select the participants. Two instruments namely - Emotional Intelligence Scale by Afolabi (20 I 4) and Students' Counselling Seeking Behaviour Questionnaire developed by the researcher were used for data collection. Validation and reliability tests were done on the instruments with the overall internal counselling reliability values of 0.91 and 0.78, using Cronbach alpha statistic respectively. Pearson product moment coefficient r, R (coefficient of determination) were used in answering the research questions while linear . regression was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The .findings revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between counsellors' emotional intelligence and students' counselling seeking behaviour. There was no significant gender difference in the extent counsellors' emotional intelligence correlates with students' counselling seeking behaviour, though female students' counselling seeking behaviour had low positive relationship with counsellors' emotional intelligence. Based on the findings, conclusion, discussions and recommendations were made and among the recommendations were that courses on components of emotional intelligence should be integrated in the counsellors' training curriculum. Since counsellors' emotional intelligence correlates with students' counselling seeking behaviour irrespective of gender, school counsellors can be offering orientation forth nightly for students on the benefits of seeking counselling intervention and providing facilitative conditions for students' development of positive attitudes towards counselling.