EFFECTIVENESS OF SOLUTION-FOCUSED BRIEF THERAPY ON PERCEIVED ACADEMIC STRESS AMONG POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS OF CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU UNIVERSITY ULI, ANAMBRA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

It is worth noting that stress is an inevitable part of students’ life because balancing academics, personal life, relationships and other peer activities by postgraduate students is very difficult. It is very vital for postgraduate students to learn how to manage the academic stress, even if it cannot be totally eliminated. Therefore this study investigated the Effectiveness of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) on perceived academic stress among postgraduate students of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Uli, Anambra State. Four correspondence research questions and four null hypotheses tested at .05 level of significance guided the study. The study adopted quasi-experimental research design specifically pretest, posttest, non-equivalent control group. The population for this study was made up of 60 doctoral education students with high rate of academic stress in all the five departments of education. A sample size of 25 respondents was drawn out of a population of 60 using purposive sampling procedure. “Perceived Academic Stress Scale” (PASS) questionnaire was adapted from Bedewy and Gabriel 2015 and used for data collection. The validity and reliability of the instrument was established and reliability index of 0.85 which was obtained. Data collected were analyzed using mean for the research questions and ANCOVA for the test of null hypotheses. The results obtained from the study indicated that solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) was significantly effective in managing academic stress among the postgraduate education students who participated in the experiment (f=206.043; p<.05). The results equally revealed that SFBT was slightly more effective in managing academic stress among the male postgraduate students than the female counterparts, but the difference in the effectiveness was not significant based on gender (f=1.966; p>.001). The results also revealed that the effectiveness of SFBT was significantly retained at four weeks follow-up (f=102.042; p<.05).  Furthermore, the results of the study showed that the effectiveness of SFBT on academic stress was more significantly retained among the male students than their female counterparts (f=5.046; p<.05). Based on the findings of this study, some recommendations were made. The researchers recommended among others that postgraduate students should be encouraged to make use of the counselling clinic provided by the university to help them build positive perception on academic stress.