High school students perception of their problems and their help seeking preferences

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine how high school students perceive their problems and how they rank their helpers in personal-emotional and educational-vocational problems. A sample of 180 students completed a questionnaire indicating how they perceive the problem areas and where they would turn for help for a sample of 12 - personal-emotional and 12 educational - vocational problems.

Kruskal-Wallis rank-order one way-analysis of variance was used to analyze the rankings of problem areas and the rankings of help-givers for personal-emotional and educational-vocational problems between: boys and girls; students with and without guidance and counseling experience; urban and peri-urban students; boys and mixed students; girls and mixed students.

The results showed that for all variables, the rankings of problem areas differed significantly. This indicated that the various groups perceived problems differently. On the average, schoolwork, and educational-vocational planning were the most concerns of the students.

Interestingly again, both variables showed significant differences in their rankings of the potentially help-givers. For personal-emotional problems, both variables preferred on the average to seek help from parents, friends or from themselves first before consulting teacher counselor, schoolteacher and headmaster/mistress. For educational-vocational problems, the students preferred to seek help from teacher counselor, schoolteacher and headmaster/mistress than from parents and student friends.

With the agove findings, it is possible to suggest that we should know the needs and concerns of students before we set to help them. It also indicates coordination between parents, student friends, teacher counselors, schoolteachers, headmasters and headmistresses is necessary if students have to be helped to solve their problems.