ATTENDING SKILLS: TOOLS FOR IMPROVING COMMUNICATION AMONG MARRIED COUPLES

Abstract

Observations from counseling revealed that married couples attend ineffectively to each other in communication. This often evokes marital problems such as misunderstanding, strained and tense relationships. Based on these observations, the researcher ventured to use attending skills counseling to improve married couples' communication and ascertain or reject it's effectiveness. An experimental design of a post-test-only control group was used to gather data for the study. Thirty married couples within Kaduna metropolis participated in the study. They were randomly assigned into two groups: treatment and control groups. A validated instrument titled "couples communication skills inventory" (CCSI) of attending skills was administered to the two groups after the experiment. A tail t-test was used to analyze the data. Results showed that the treatment packaged on attending skills was effective in improving communication of couples. Based on the finding, attending skills counselling treatment was recommended for marriage enrichment programme.