Some Social Predictors of Gamophobia Among Unmarried Postgraduate Students in Tertiary Institutions in Rivers State (Published)
This study was carried out to determine some social predictors of gamophobia among unmarried postgraduate students of Universities in Rivers State. To achieve this aim, three specific objectives were formulated and transformed into three research questions and three corresponding hypotheses. Consequently, correlational design was adopted and two instruments titled Gamophobic Behaviour Inventory (GBI) and Psychosocial Variable Questionnaire (PVQ) which were well validated and had reliability coefficients of 0.76 and 0.86 respectively through Cronbach Alpha. The sample of the study included 522 unmarried postgraduate students carefully and purposefully identified for the study. Furthermore, in both research questions and hypotheses, predictive relationship of the variables was the focus, therefore simple regression statistic and analysis of variance (ANOVA) associated with it were used to answer the research questions and test the tenability of the stated null hypotheses respectively at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study revealed that two out of the three variables significantly predicted gamophobia among unmarried postgraduate students of Universities in Rivers state. The variables were masturbation (p=.009<.05) and parental marital background (p=.000<.05). On the other hand, mate sellection preference (p=.793>.05) was not a significant predictor of gamophobia among unmarried postgraduate students of universities in Rivers state. Based on these findings it was recommended among others that in the area of marriage, pre-marital counselling and counsellors should be made available to as many unmarried adults as possible. This is because many other things influence love. Adult men and women should be taught to give attention to such factors as masturbation, parental marital background etc. to avoid breaking each other ‘s heart culminating in nuptial-phobia or gamophobia.
Keywords: Gamophobia, masturbation, mate selection preference, parental marital background