Mental Strength and Career Development Among Youths in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area (LGA), Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the impact of building mental strength on career development among youths. It is built on the rationale that youths need to build mental strength to be able to understand them and make the right career choices especially in the choice of courses they eventually study in school as a foundation for their career path in life. To achieve these four research questions and four objectives were raised to guide the study. The key indicators of lack of mental strength (stress, fear and pressure etc.) were identified and measured against those of career development. The indicators identified further informed the research questions and the objectives of the study. Two theories were adopted, and they are; social cognitive theory of Albert Abandura and John Lewis Holland theory of career and vocational choice theory, these aided the theoretical focus for the study. A sample of 400 questionnaire respondents was determined using the Taro Yamane formula and 22 key persons were purposively determined for interview. The study adopted the mixed method design and a multistage sampling approach to select the questionnaire respondents and interview participants. Following the mixed method design, the data collection techniques involved the use of a self-designed questionnaire to gather quantitative data and an interview guide to collect qualitative data from key persons. To analyze the data collected, simple percentages presented in tables were used for the quantitative data, while the thematic content analysis was deployed to analyze the qualitative data. Drawing from the analysis, the findings show that 56.2% of the participants strongly agreed that youths need to build mental strength, and 58.8% agreed that building mental strength can help to fight fear; which is one of the indictors of lack of mental strength based on the findings. Hence, the study recommends among others, that programs should be created to encourages mental strength building