Problem Solving and Assertiveness Skills Training in Fostering Identity Formation among early Adolescents in Junior Secondary Schools in Ibadan

Identity formation is one of the major developmental tasks every adolescent must undergo. It occurs throughout life cycle and concerns the fundamental biological, cognitive and social changes. Poor identity formation could bring about confusion, irrational fear and indecision among the adolescents. Most studies have examined effectiveness of psycho-therapies in enhancing adolescents performance with little focus on identity formation. This study, therefore, examined the effectiveness of problem-solving (PSST) and assertiveness skills training (ASST) in fostering identity formation among early adolescents in Junior Secondary Schools. The moderating effects of self-efficacy and parental socio-economic status were determined.

Psychosocial theory provided the framework for the study, while the pretest-posttest, control group, quasi-experimental design with a 3x3x3 factorial matrix was adopted. Three out of five local governments that were densely populated with students were purposively selected. Next, identity formation screening tool was administered to draw students who have poor identity formation. Thirty participants were selected from each school making 90 participants using simple random sampling technique. The participants were intact PSST (30), ASST (30), and control groups (30). The intervention lasted for two months. Ego Identity Development Scale was used to screen the participants for the experimentation General Self-efficacy scale (α = 0.76), Identity Formation Scale (α = 0.87) and Parental Socio-economic Status Scale (α = 0.73) were used for data collection. Seven hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Analysis of co-variance and Duncan post-hoc test were utilised for data analysis.

There was significant main effect of treatments in fostering identity formation of early adolescents in JSS. (F(2, 65) = 18.175, partial η2 = .359). Participants in the PSST group improved better in fostering identity formation (x = 44.38) than ASST (x = 40.83 and control group (x = 31.37) respectively. There was no significant main effect of self-efficacy (F(2, 65) = .981, partial η2 = .029) on identity formation. There was significant main effect of socio-economic status (F(2, 65) = 4.413, partial η2 = 120) on identity formation. There was no significant interaction effect of treatment and self-efficacy on identity formation. There was no significant interaction effect of treatment and socio-economic status on identity formation. However, there were three way interaction effects of treatment, self efficacy and socio-economic status on the dependent measured.

Problem-solving and assertiveness skills training were effective in fostering identity formation of early adolescents in Junior Secondary Schools in Ibadan. It was observed that problem solving was more effective than assertiveness skill training in fostering identity formation of adolescents. It is therefore recommended that educational/counselling psychologists and other stakeholders could adopt these training in management of identity formation among early adolescents in junior secondary schools. Since the combined effects of problem-solving and assertiveness skills training had strong treatment gains than individual skills training, both problem-solving and assertiveness skills training were therefore suggested very useful skills in fostering identity formation of early adolescents in Junior Secondary Schools.

Key Words:  Problem-solving skill, Assertiveness skill, Identity formation, Secondary School  adolescents.

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