Effects of Self-Management and Social Skills Training on the Reduction of Adolescents’ Conduct Disorder

Abstract

The thrust of this paper is on the effects of two instructional techniques, self-management and social skills training, on the reduction of adolescents’ conduct disorder. One research hypothesis was raised and was testedat 0.05 level of significance. A pretest-posttest control group experimental design was adopted in the study. The population consisted of 184 identified conduct disorder adolescents’ in a mixed school that was purposively selected from the senior secondary schools in Ikpoba-OkhaLocal Government Area in Benin City with the assistance of 12 subject teachers who have had contact with the students’ for at least six months. The study made used of a sample of 90 senior secondary school three (SS III) adolescent students. The instrument used for data collection was the Conduct Disorder Assessment Scale (CDAS) constructed in accordance with the American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). The instrument was face validated by three experts in the field of educational psychology and counselling. Cronbach Alpha as a measure of internal consistence reliability was used to establish the reliability of the instrument. The coefficient obtained were 0.80 for aggressive behaviour, 0.81 for destructive behaviour, 0.76 for stealing and 0.84 for serious violation of rules. The data collected were analyzed using one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Analysis of Co-variance (ANCOVA) to determine the proportion of the variance of the criterion which existed before the experimental and what was obtained after. By using ANCOVA, also errors in the variance were substantially minimized in the final scores. The results obtained indicated significant differences in conduct disorder (four subsets) adolescent students exposed to treatment intervention (self-management and social skills training) and control group. The post-hoc analysis on aggressive and stealing behaviours showed that the mean differences were significant at the 0.05 level. That significant differences existed in destructive and rules violation behaviours among adolescents’ exposed to both treatments and those in control group (p<0.05). Based on these findings, it is concluded that self-management and social skills training are effective packages for the reduction of conduct disorder among adolescents’. The researcher recommends that school councellors embrace self-management and social skills training to effectively reduce conduct disorder among secondary school adolescents.