The Big Five Personality as a Correlate of Involvement in Violence among Students in Secondary Schools in Nyando Sub-County, Kenya
- October 1, 2021
- Posted by: RSIS
- Categories: IJRISS, Psychology
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue IX, September 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186
Omanyo Abraham Otieno, Omae Peter Onderi, Disiye Margaret Awuor
Department of Psychology, Maseno University, Kenya
Abstract: Involvement in violence among students is a common menace not only in Nyando Sub-county, Kenya but also in the whole world. Establishing a link between the big five personality and involvement in violence could be useful in developing various personality based interventions to involvement in violence. This prompted the present study to investigate both qualitative and quantitative relationship between the big five personality and involvement in violence. The convergent parallel mixed method research design was used. A multistage random sampling was used to generate a sampling size of 418 students. A part from the students, teacher counselors and deputy head teachers were also interviewed in order to triangulate the sources of information. Both self report questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data. The results indicated that extraversion and neuroticism were positively correlated to violence at correlation coefficients r = 0.155 and r = 0.102 respectively. While agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness were negatively correlated to violence at correlation coefficients r = -0.101, r = -0.425 and r = -0.187 respectively. This implied that as the extroversive and neurotic tendencies rose, the levels of involvement in violence also rose in the population. Conversely as the agreeable, conscientious and openness tendencies rose, the levels of involvement in violence reduced significantly. Therefore to minimize involvement in violence, more interventional measures should be applied to people who display more of extraversion and neuroticism.
Key Words: Extraversion; Conscientiousness; Openness; Agreeableness; Neuroticism; Violence.
I. INTRODUCTION
Involvement in violence among students is a common menace not only in Nyando Sub-county, Kenya but also in the whole world as evident by different reviewed studies. According to Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, on top of the top six listed risky behaviors among young people in USA were behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence (CDC report, 2011). Williams (2009) in Australia reported that 14.5% of boys and 3.1% of girls were involved in violent behavior while 8.8% of boys and 3.6% of girls were involved in antisocial behaviors. Reddy (2013) in South Africa reported that over 17% of young people carried weapons and 41% had been bullied, 14% belonged to gangs, and 10% had been forced to have sex.
