Influence of Age and Educational Level on Adjustment Strategies to Widowhood Stress in Rivers State, Nigeria (Published)
This study was designed to determine the extent to which age and educational level influence adjustment strategies to widowhood stress among widows in Rivers State, Nigeria. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Two research questions and two corresponding hypotheses guided the conduct of the study at 0.05 alpha levels. A sample of 370 widows in Rivers State was drawn from the population through proportional stratified random sampling technique. Two instruments namely; Stress Level Scale for Widows (SLSW) and Questionnaire for Widows Adjustment Strategies (QWAS), both developed by the researcher were used for data collection. Data were analysed with mean, standard deviation and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). All hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance and the statistical package known as SPSS for widows was employed for the analyses. Results showed that; widows in Rivers State differ significantly in their adjustment strategies to widowhood stress on the basis of age, educational attainment. Based on the findings of this work, three relevant recommendations were made one of which is that counsellors could systematically use the adjustment strategies studied in this research to help widows to cope with widowhood stress
Keywords: Adjustment, Age, Educational Level, Rivers State, Stress, Widowhood