Effects of Communication and Conflict Management Skills in Enhancing the Interpersonal Relationships of Seventh-day Adventist Couples in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

This study through a pretest-posttest, control group experimental design
with a 3x2x2 factorial matrix examines the effects of communication and
conflict management skills in enhancing the interpersonal relationships
of Seventh-day Adventist couples in Lagos, Nigeria. Simple random
sampling technique was used to select three parishes of the Seventh-Day
Adventist Church in Lagos. The participants were randomly assigned to
treatment and control groups. Participants in the two treatment groups
were exposed to eight weeks of communication and conflict management
skills training. Two instruments were used for data collation; thus,
Interpersonal Relationship Scale (IRS) and Introversion-Extroversion
Indicator Scale. Data were analysed using Analysis of Covariance. The
study observes a significant main effect of treatment on couples
interpersonal relationship. Likewise, there was no significant main effect
of personality on the interpersonal relationship among couples. Therefore,
counselling/psychological intervention programmes should be put in
place to help married couple in conflict to self-rediscover their objective
of getting married at the first instance and improve on their interpersonal
relationship competence as to adjust to the demands of marriage. This
would help them develop the potentials to establish and sustain good
marital interpersonal relationship.