EFFECT OF LOCUS OF CONTROL AND GENDER ON PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING OF STUDENTS

ABSTRACT The study aimed to investigating the effects of locus of control on the psychological well-being of undergraduate students. The specific objectives are to: analyse the impact of the locus of control on psychological wellbeing among undergraduate students, examine the effect of gender on psychological wellbeing among undergraduate students and examine the impact of locus of control and gender impact of psychological wellbeing among undergraduate student. The participants comprise of two hundred (200) students both Male and Female cutting across various levels and department. The correlation research design was adopted for the study. Two major instruments where used: the Duttweiler locus of control scale which was used to assess an individual’s locus of control beliefs and the Ryff psychological well-being.The data was analyzed using regression.Three Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 significant level. The result of hypothesis one showed that locus of control did not significantly impact psychological wellbeing of undergraduate studentsF(1, 196) = 0.027, p = 0.871, ƞ2 = 0.0001,result of hypothesis two showed that gender did not have significant interaction impact on psychological wellbeing of undergraduateF(1, 196) = 0.164, p = 0.686, ƞ2 = 0.001 and Result of hypothesis three revealed that the locus of control and gender did not have significant interaction impact on psychological wellbeing of undergraduate F(1,196) = 0.308, p = 0.579, ƞ2 = 0.002. The study therefore recommended that administrators, healthcare providers, and educators can play an important role in developing protective programmes through appropriate locus of control to build an encouraging educational setting so as to promote students’ psychosocial well-being, enhance their efficiency, boost their achievement, save their souls and wealth, as well as shield families and communities.