Perceived Causes of Social Anxiety among In-school Adolescents in Zaria Metropolis: Implication for Counselling

Abstract

Social anxiety is recognized as one of life-threatening psychological problems that human beings may experience in life and it can affect anybody. This study investigated perceived causes of social anxiety among in-school adolescents in Zaria metropolis, Kaduna State. Descriptive survey design was adopted for this study and proportional, stratified and simple random sampling techniques were adopted to draw a total number of 384 among in-school adolescents in Zaria metropolis, Kaduna State. A questionnaire titled “Causes of Social Anxiety Questionnaire (CSAQ)” was used to collect relevant data from the respondents. The instrument was subjected to face validity among experts in the field counselling. More so, test re-test method was used for its reliability and a co-efficient of 0.68 was achieved. Hypotheses were tested using t-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. Frequency count and percentage was used to present the demographic data. The findings of the study revealed that the major causes of social anxiety among in-school adolescents in Zaria metropolis, Kaduna State are poor social adjustment (that is; lack of requisite social skills or social competence), negative self-evaluation in social situation and high genetic social anxiety vulnerability index. The hypotheses tested revealed that both gender and home background have significant influence in the perceptions of the respondents on the causes of social anxiety, while religion has no significant influence. Based on the findings of this study some recommendations were made.