EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AND EMPATHY AS PREDICTORS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND AFFECTIVE ENGAGEMENT AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ABIA STATE

Abstract

The study investigated effective communication and empathy as predictors of conflict resolutionand affective engagement among senior secondary school students in Abia State. The study adopted correlational research design. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted to select the sample of 400 SS2 students from the population of 29077 students in Abia State. The researcher developed three research instruments for data collection titled; Effective Communication Questionnaire (ECQ), Empathy Questionnaire (EQ) and Affective Engagement Questionnaire (AEQ). The instruments were face validated by three experts, two from Department of Guidance and Counselling (Educational Psychology Unit) and one from Science Education Department (Measurement and Evaluation Unit) respectively all from MOUAU. The reliability of the three instruments were determined using Cronbach Alpha Method which yielded reliability values of 0.80 for the ECQ, 0.84 for the EEIQ and 0.75 for SEQ respectively. The instruments were administered to the students through the help of three research assistants. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (Pearson r) was used to answer the research questions, while linear regression analysis was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that effective communication significantly predicted affective engagement among students in Abia State as it negatively predicted 88.0% of the variance observed in affective engagement of students in Abia State. Empathy predicted 52.2% of the affective engagement of students in Abia State. Among others it was recommended that teachers should establish feedback mechanisms that allow students to express their thoughts and feelings so as to meet their communication needs.