EFFECTIVENESS OF ATTENDING TO FEELINGS COUNSELLING IN IMPROVING INTERACTION OF MARRIED COUPLES FOR HEAL THY RELATIONSHIP

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to find out the effectiveness of attending to feelings in reducing interaction problems of married couples. The population of the study consisted of Diploma II students of the 2009/2010 academic session, Institute of Education, in ABU, Zaria, totaling about 275. 30 subjects, each comprising of male and female married couples, were randomly selected and assigned to experimental and control groups.

An experimental design of post-test only control group was adopted, where the experimental group was treated to attending to feelings counseling for seven weeks, and the control group was not. An instrument titled "Couples Communication Skills Questionnaire, Section on Attending to Feelings" was administered to both experimental (treated) and control (not treated) groups for data collection. A t-test technique of analysis was used to analyze the data. The result showed a significant difference between participants exposed to the experiment and those in the control groups. Based on this finding, attending to feelings counseling was recommended for counselors.