THE IMPINGEMENTS OF AGE AND PARENT’S SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS ON THE EFFICACY OF SOLUTION-FOCUSED BRIEF THERAPY IN MANAGING SOCIALLY MALADJUSTED SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN BENIN METROPOLIS

Abstract

This study investigated the impingements of age and parent’s socioeconomic status on the efficacy of solution-focused brief therapy in managing socially maladjusted senior secondary school students in Benin metropolis. Two (2) research questions and corresponding hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level. A quasi-experimental design using pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent control group was adopted. The study had a sample of seventy two (72) students in SSII class was drawn from two (2) selected schools. The multi-stage sampling technique was adopted to draw samples across four stages and two (2) schools emerged as the treatment and control group with thirty eight (38) and thirty four (34) participants respectively. The School Social Maladjustment Questionnaire (SSMQ) was the instrument used for both the pre-test and post-test. The reliability coefficient index of 0.85 was obtained. The data collected were analysed, using mean, standard deviation and two way ANOVA statistics. The findings showed that there are no treatment interaction effects by age and parents socio-economic status of social maladjustment mean scores of adolescents in public senior secondary schools (p>0.05). Based on the findings, the study concluded that solution-focused brief therapy was effective in managing socially maladjusted secondary school adolescents, but there was no interaction effect of age and parent’s socioeconomic status on the treatment outcome. The study recommended that the therapy should be used on larger population of participants and academic class level for a re-validation of its effective outcome