SOCIAL VARIABLES AND SUICIDAL BEHAVIOUR TENDENCY AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN AKWA IBOM STATE, NIGERIA

The study examined social variables and suicidal behaviour tendency among university students in Akwa Ibom State. Two purposes, research questions and hypotheses apiece were formulated to guide the study. The researchers adopted the descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprised all the 5,905 year three undergraduates in the 2 public Universities in the state. A sample size of 590 undergraduates was selected through multi-staged sampling procedure. Also, systematic random sampling technique was used to select 10 faculties from the two universities, hence, 59 respondents from each of the sampled faculties were selected using hat and draw method. The researcher self-structured and validated instrument titled “Social Variables and Suicidal Behaviour Tendency among University Students Questionnaire” (SVSBTUSQ) was used for data collection. In other to establish the reliability of the instrument, Cronbach Alpha statistics was applied for test of internal consistency which yielded the reliability co-efficient of .87 and .76. Mean and standard deviation was used in answering the research questions, while Independent t-test was used for testing of hypotheses. Findings of the study showed that suicidal behaviour tendency among university students significantly differ based on estrangement in relationship and family emotionally climate. Conclusion was drawn from the findings and the study recommended among other things that: parents should always maintain emotionally stable and well-adjusted homes where students’ emotional feeling and needs are adequately addressed to avoid temptation to committing suicide.