ABSTRACT
This study focused on the effects of focus group counselling and assertiveness training on marital instability of couples in Anambra state. Five research questions and five null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a true experimental design. The population of the study consisted of 310 couples experiencing marital instability. Purposive sampling technique was used to composed a sample of 30 couple from Awka north and Awka south Local Government Area of Anambra state. The sample was based on urban and rural areas. The thirty couples were assigned to groups using ballot system. The instrument used for data collection was the researcher made questionnaire tagged Marital Instability Programme Questionnaire (MIPQ) of 30 items with a four point response mode. The instrument was face validated by three experts in the Department of Educational Foundations, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The instrument was trial tested in Onitsha South Local Government Area of Anambra State, using 20 couples experiencing marital instability. The data collected was analysed using Chronbach alpha method and internal consistency reliability estimate obtained was 0.86. After the treatment the data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions and a two-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) for the hypotheses. The result showed that focus group counselling and assertiveness training were positively effective in helping the couples regain marital instability, though assertiveness training showed more positive effect on marital instability of couples. Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made: that students, teachers and parents should be taught how to use the techniques in preventing marital conflict. That the government should train and recruit more guidance counsellors for the schools and necessary establishment, the techniques should be integrated into the curriculum of social welfare workers, counselling centers should be made available in all communities and marriage counselling should be part of the curriculum of the student counsellors both at National Certificate in Education (NCE) and Degree levels.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Marriage can be an exciting, rewarding and beautiful adventure if properly managed. God designed the opposite sexes to complement each other. He united man and woman in marriage so that they might give to each other what each lacks (Uwe, 2006). Marriage can be viewed as the coming together of man and woman who have agreed as husband and wife, to plan and set up their own family (Arowolo, 2014), Ogunsanmi (2005) sees marriage as an agreement between a man and a woman who take certain vows to love and cherish and in health, for better and for worse. Marriage from the researcher’s point of view, is the mutual agreement of a man and a woman to live together as husband and wife, to live a life of vocation of love and sharing, in richer and in poorer and to raise children. Marriage is the beginning of family life; therefore, if marriage for a couple begins on a stable note and is sustained over time, the foundation for a stable marriage life may have been laid.
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Marital stability according to Okorodudu (2010) is the availability of certain ingredients of success in order that the growth of personal fulfillment of members can be assured in the family. He further said that marital stability involves the process whereby couples are engaged in mental, sexual, physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, social and educational adjustment to themselves. George (2002) stated that the family’s success is often measured in terms of her member’s happiness and satisfaction. Hence, where there is happiness and contentment expressed by family members, such a family could be said to be stable. From the researcher’s point of view, marital stability can be defined as a stable or steady marriage. The marriage in which the rate of mutually exchanged benefits is high, while the rate of mutually exchanged punishment is low. According to Onwuasoanya and Okeke (2009), family stability is an on-going process. It is a life long affair, a state that family members have to work towards maintaining through making relevant modifications as the need arise.
Marital instability on the other and, is the marriage existing with the presence of thorny, divisive issues capable of leading to separation. A marriage which is marked by serious and perhaps violent quarrels or conflicts can be regarded as being unstable. In other words, conflicts in marriage renders it unstable. The concept of marital instability in this study is limited to the cases of separation and divorce among couples. According to O’Rourke and Cappeliez (2003), unstable family is that where there is dishonesty, lack of love, lack of positive communication, lack of care and proper management, where there is chaos, pride, irrational thinking and so on. When marriage starts with delusion, shallow understanding of the challenges of marital life, disrespect for each other and inability of couples to express their feelings to their partners, negative perception and selfish tendencies, the scenario of marital negativism plays out, the consequence is usually marital instability.
In my locality a woman was thrown out of her matrimonial home by the husband, who subsequently filed a divorce against her. The said woman who is responsible for the feeding of her family, complained after six months that her salary could no longer carry the sister in-law who came to stay in her father’s house with the husband, six children and a house help, due to their inability to meet up with their house rent. They are in court till date. My relative was at conflict with the husband for many years, due to the fact that the husband forced her to run a joint account with him and was banned from withdrawing from the account no matter the need or face the consequence. She was sent home the day she summond up courage to express her feelings to the husband.
An interview with the Registrar Social Welfare Awka, Anambra State by the researcher on the 19th of April, 2012, indicated that most of the unresolved cases which stemmed from financial issues in the past four years were as a result of the inability of the couples to freely express their thoughts and feelings, again some couples feel they are being taken advantage of but are afraid to say “no” to that. Also a visit to the state high court Awka revealed that the records of divorce cases are on the increase on yearly basis. Ojeme (2007) remarked that there are too many problems confronting marriages and families, which are health-related, sex-related, finance-related and children-related.
According to Ojeme (2014) the issue of finance is another problem that could tear families if they are unable to handle financial issues well. When family instability sets in, there is need for change. Change is particularly important when families are under stress and need to adapt in a crisis (Onwuasoanya & Okeke, 2009). Counselling therefore plays important role to such couples in helping them identify their problems and in resolving them to a logical conclusion.
Counselling is the act of providing psychological support, appropriate education and coping skills to a person affected by any adverse event (Nelson-Jones, 2012). According to Pever (2009) counselling is a process through which individuals are helped to improve their understanding of themselves and their relationship with others, as well as to greater depth in understanding the conditions within which they live. Counselling in the context of this study, is the process of providing couples experiencing problems with skills to assist them identify and resolve their problems, this can be done individually or in a group.
Marriage counselling therefore is the counselling practice geared towards helping couples to salvage their crumbling marriages, by helping them discover the toxins in their unions and learn those missing interpersonal skills they need, to enrich and improve the emotional situation in their marriage (Nwoye, 1991). It can be seen in this context as a process in which a specialist in counselling assists individuals, couples or families in resolving problems during courtship and marriage.
Several counselling techniques could be employed in assisting couples experiencing marital instability such as equilibrium intervention, cognitive restructuring, psychological transition, mediation, focus group counselling, assertiveness training and so on. But for the purpose of this study focus group counselling and assertiveness training were used to assist couples to ascertain their effect on marital instability of couples.
Focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitude towards an idea, concept or product. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members (Kaufman, 2003). According to Kaufman, the term focus group was coined by a psychologist and marketing expert, Ernert Ditchter. Focus group is an interview conducted by a trained moderator among small group of respondents. The interview is conducted in an unstructured and natural way, where respondents are free to give views from any aspect (Lindolf & Taylor, 2002).
Focus group discussion produces data and insight that would be less assessable without interaction found in a group setting, listening to others’ experience stimulate memories, ideas and experiences in participants. This is also known as the group effect, where group members engage in “a kind of chaining or cascading effect, talk links to or tumbled out of the topics and expression proceeding it”.
Focus group counselling which is one of the techniques that can be used to assist couples experiencing conflict in their marriages is a derivative technique of the behavioural research tool categorized as focus group discussion. Like focus group discussion therefore, focus group counselling entails the stimulation of verbal exchanges and interactions between lead discussant and others with varied experiences on a specific thematic area (Kolo, 2009). Focus group counselling explicitly uses group interaction as part of the method. This means that instead of the researcher asking each person to respond to questions in turn, people are encouraged to talk to one another asking questions, exchanging anecdotes and commenting on each other’s experiences and point of view. The method is particularly useful for exploring people’s knowledge and experiences and can be used to examine not only what people think, but how they think and why they think that way (Kitsinger, 1995). This implies that couples who are experiencing marital conflicts can be assisted to regain their marital stability through focus group counselling as it will help them to understand themselves better. Within the context of this study, focus groups are structured, guided discussions, gathering of data for scientific purposes. A specially trained moderator facilitates the discussion through a process of “guided interaction” within a controlled environment. The moderator or other participants can explore ideas generated by the group. The moderator can draw out motivations, feelings and values behind verbalizations through skillful probing and restating responses. Participants stimulate each other in an exchange of ideas that may not emerge in individual interview or surveys. The moderator can link ideas for further explorations. Group interaction generates insights that might not occur without the cross fertilization of ideas that occur in a well moderated focus group. Focus groups afford depth and insight into the research questions and help contextualize data (Krueger and Casey, 2000). The researcher therefore examined the extent focus group counselling would go in assisting couples in resolving marital issues.
Following the point of view of Hawkins (2009), the most important thing in marriage is effective communication, sometimes people do not say what they intended to say, other times people do not say what they feel because they know that their mate will take it the wrong way, as a result, communication becomes strained. Ineffective communication leads to frustration and is detrimental to marriage as it can result to separation and divorce. It is therefore pertinent that couples develop skills of assertive communication.
