ABSTRACT

 The purpose of this study was to determine the extent personality traits and self-efficacy correlate with school adjustment among secondary school students in Abia State. To carry out this study, seven research questions were posed and seven null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a correlational research design. A total of 878 respondents drawn from the entire population of 8783 senior secondary school class II students drawn through multistage sampling techniques made up the sample for the study. Three instruments were used for the study. The researcher developed two of the instruments namely; “Personality Traits Assessment Questionnaire (PTAQ)”, Selfefficacy Questionnaire (SEQ)”; while “School Adjustment Questionnaire (SAQ)” was adapted from School Adjustment Scale (SAS) developed by Ekennia (2016). These instruments were subjected to face validation by three experts, two from the Department of Psychology and Counselling and one from Measurement and Evaluation; all from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The stability of the instruments were determined using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and reliability indices of 0.83, 0.84 and 0.93 for PTAQ, SEQ and SAQ respectively. The internal consistency of the instruments were determined using Cronbach Alpha method and reliability indices of 0.78, 0.77 and 0.87 were obtained for PTAQ, SEQ and SAQ respectively. The data obtained through the administration of the three instruments were analyzed using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (Pearson’s r R2 coefficient of determination) to answer the research questions, while linear and multiple regression analyses were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Scheffe test was also done for a step-wise comparison of the means of hypothesis six. Results revealed as follows: Joint personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) significantly correlated with school adjustment among secondary school students. The joint personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) had a very high percentage contribution of 99.8%. However, openness to experience had the highest percentage contribution of 74.2%; followed by conscientiousness with 71.1%; agreeableness with 58.2%; extraversion 56.4% and lastly neuroticism which negatively predicted 31.8% of the students’ level of school adjustment. Self-efficacy significantly correlated with school adjustment among secondary school students as it correlated 80.3% of school adjustment among secondary school students in Abia State. Among the educational implications was that students have diverse personality traits that may enable them to exhibit both adaptive and maladaptive behaviours in the classroom. When the students exhibit adaptive behaviours, it tends to result to positive school adjustment while negative school adjustment may be due to maladaptive behaviours. It was thus recommended among others that government should deploy trained counsellors and psychologists in all the public secondary schools to help the students’ adjust properly in schools. Also, teachers should vary their teaching methods and instructional materials to accommodate the personality differences that exist among the students for their proper adjustment in the school.