Sources of stress and coping strategies among students with disabilities in Kwara state, Nigeria

Abstract

This study was undertaken purposely to investigate the sources of stress among students with disabilities in Kwara State.  It also sought to find out the coping strategies employed by the students with disabilities to reduce stress in their day to day activities. The descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. Four research questions were raised, and two hypotheses were tested. The target population comprised all students with disabilities in Kwara State. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 321 respondents for the study. The instrument was adapted from Ajagbe (2013) and was validated by experts in Social Sciences Education.  Test re-test method of reliability was applied for the reliability of the instrument. The correlation coefficient stood at 0.77. Summated Mean Rating and Mean Rating were used to answer the research questions, while t-test was used to test the formulated hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that the educational or school-related sources have a mean score of 14.51 than home-related sources with a mean score of 12.08 and peer-related sources of stress with 11.56. Findings also revealed that the first coping strategies adopted by respondents were reading and meditating on God’s word, while going for exercise was 2nd, and discussing problems with parents was 3rd. Based on the study's findings, it was recommended that psychologists and counsellors be posted to schools to help students with disabilities adopt adequate coping strategies to prevent school-related stress.