The Influence of Gender and Family Background on the Effectiveness of Client Centered and Rational Emotive Behaviour Counselling Therapies in Enhancing the SelfConcept of Adolescents

Abstract

Among the Counselling approaches adopted to assist adolescents to solve their problems are the ClientCentered Therapy (CCT) and the Rational Emotive Bahaviour Therapy (REBT). Counsellors in Nigeria adopt any of the two approaches whenever a client presents a problem, without regard to the relative effectiveness of the approaches. The client-centered therapy belongs to the existential humanistic school of thought while the rational emotive behaviour therapy belongs to the cognitive behaviour school. The two therapies were selected for comparison in this study because of their link with self as a concept and because of a dearth of empirical data regarding their relative effectiveness in enhancing the self-concept of Nigerian youths. The purpose of the study was to determine if CCT and REBT are effective in enhancing the self-concept of adolescents, which of the two therapies is more effective in solving the problem and whether or not the effectiveness is influenced by family background and gender. The design of the study consisted of two experimental groups and one control group of 50 subjects each. The subjects were 150 adolescents drawn by means of stratified random sampling from three high schools in the city of Ado-Ekiti in Nigeria. The subjects were screened out from an original pool of a large number of adolescents in the high schools as having self-concept problem based on their scores on a self-concept scale designed by the researchers. Fifty students from each of two of the schools formed experimental groups while the third group from the third school formed the control group. The three groups were pre-tested with a 35-item self-concept inventory designed to measure family characteristics and five dimensions of self-concept namely physical self, mental self, personal self, social self and global self. One experimental group was exposed to REBT and the other to CCT while the control group received no therapy. Both therapies consisted of three counselling sessions held on separate days each lasting for 40 minutes for a period of eight weeks. The three groups were finally post tested with the self-concept inventory. Analysis of data using analysis of covariance indicated that while both REBT and CCT were significantly effective in solving self-concept problems of adolescents, the REBT was significantly more effective. The effect of the therapy on self-concept was significantly influenced by gender but not by family background of the subjects.