RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERSONALITY AND POST- TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER EXPERIENCED BY SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN AGBANI EDUCATION ZONE

Abstract

The study was carried out to determine the relationship between personality and post-traumatic stress disorder as experienced by senior secondary school students. Five research questions and five null hypotheses guided the study. The study was conducted in Agbani Education Zone of Enugu State, Nigeria using a descriptive survey research design method with a sample of three hundred and fifty (350) senior secondary school one (SS1) students randomly drawn from three schools. Technique adopted for sampling was multistage stratified sampling. Structured questionnaire was made up of 50 items from Child and Adolescent trauma questionnaire and 20 items from L.G. Goldberg International personality item pool. The instrument was validated by three experts from Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu. A total of 350 of questionnaire was distributed and returned.  Cronbach alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument and a co-efficient of 0.75 was obtained. The level of relationship between the research questions was answered using Pearson Product Moment Correlation while t-test was used to determine the differences between the mean ratings of the null hypotheses. The major findings of the study revealed that one’s personality can determine his level of reaction to PTSD with Neuroticism having the highest number of significance hence all the null hypothesis was rejected. Based on these findings, it was recommended that identification of personality based risk and protective factors as well as understanding variables may help in building strategies for prevention, identification and reduction of health risk among students living with trauma.