Assessing the counselling needs of undergraduate students on multiple-site Sandwich programmes of institute of education, University of Cape Coast

Abstract

The study assessed the counselling needs of students on sandwich programmes of the Institute of Education, University of Cape Coast. Two research questions and four hypotheses were answered and tested respectively. A descriptive study in which 207 respondents were selected from four sandwich centres of the Institute of Education, using various sampling techniques and procedures. The Counselling Needs Inventory designed by the investigators were used to collect data. The predominant counselling need of the students was “I need help on how to get along with extrovert spouse”, whilst a majority of them preferred to talk to a counsellor. Statistically significant differences were found to exist between counselling needs by gender, and age with regards to their psychological needs. No statistically significant differences were found among the ages of the respondents and counselling needs such as Financial needs, Marital needs and Educational needs, and among marital status and number of years taught by the respondents and their counselling needs. It was therefore concluded that sandwich students of the Institute of Education, University of Cape have counselling needs. Among recommendations were that authorities/agencies should ensure that professional counselling services are rendered by universities that run programmes in the non-conventional mode. Implications of the study for counselling included the fact that professional counsellors should be attached to multiple sites of sandwich programmes. Again, students on sandwich programmes should be offered similar counselling services as those in the conventional mode.