Social Support, Coping Strategies and Academic Adjustment of First Year University Undergraduates in Rivers State, Nigeria. (Published)
This study was designed to determine the extent to which social support, and coping strategies predict academic adjustment of first year university undergraduates in Rivers State, Nigeria. Correlation design was adopted for the study. Three research questions and three corresponding hypotheses guided the conduct of the study at 0.05 alpha levels. A sample of 382 first year university undergraduates of Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Port Harcourt, 2015/2016 academic session was drawn from the population through purposive and proportional stratified random sampling techniques. Three instruments namely; Multidimensional Scale for Perceived Social Support, Coping Strategies Inventory and Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire – Academic subscale were used for data collection. Simple and multiple regression analyses were used for data analysis. All data were subjected to analysis using statistical package for social science (SPSS). Results showed that; social support statistically significantly predicted academic adjustment of first year university undergraduates; coping strategies (problem-focused and emotion-focused) taken together statistically significantly predicted academic adjustment of first year university undergraduates; on the basis of individual contribution, problem-focused was a significant contributor to academic adjustment of first year university undergraduates while emotion-focused was not. Based on the findings, conclusion and recommendations were made.
Keywords: Academic, Coping, Social, Strategies., and adjustment, support