Sexual Behaviour, Mental Health as Correlate of Marital Life Adjustment among Couples in Delta State

The study investigated sexual behaviour, mental health as correlate of marital life adjustment among couples in delta state. Two research questions and two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05level of significance to guide the study. A correlational survey research design was used for this study. The Population of the Study is all the couples in Delta North Senatorial District of Delta State. Three hundred (300) couples were chosen at random from the two (2) LGA. Ika North East 300 while Ika South 300, which brings a total of six hundred (600) respondents. The sexual behaviour, mental health, and marital adjustment scale (SBMHMAS), was the instrument used to collect the data. There are four parts to it. Part A: deals with personal information, including name of LGA, gender, age, and educational background. Part B had the sexual behaviour scale (SBS), which had 15 items, Part C contained the mental health scale (MHS), which had 15 items, and Part D contained the marital adjustment scale (MAS), which had 15 things. The total number of items was 45. The questionnaire was structured in a four (4) point scale that required respondents to tick (√) as appropriate the statement for which they Strongly Agree ?SA?=4, Agree?A? =3, Disagree ?D?=2 and Strongly Disagree ?SD?=1 for Positive while Strongly Agree ?SA?=1, Agree?A? =2, Disagree ?D?=3 and Strongly Disagree ?SD?=4 for negative scoring. Measurement and evaluation, guidance, and counselling department expert reviewed the questionnaire, made some modifications, and determined that the items were appropriate for the study, this helps to improve the face, content, and construct validity of the instrument. The total cumulative variance of the items revealed the scales' content validity. The scale's content validity was 78.62%, with a rotated factor loading matrix that ranged from.52 and .89 was used to determine its construct validity. To establish the reliability of this instrument, Cronbach alpha method was used to estimate the reliability of scales (SBMHMAS). The scales has alpha= .90P ≤ 0.5 level of significance. These scales were pilot tested on a sample of 65 respondents from a separate local government area in delta state. Married couples in Ika North East and Ika South Local Government Areas of Delta State provided the data for this study. Pearson Products Moment of Correlation was used to answer research questions while Regression Analysis and simple correlation were employed to test the research hypothesis at .05 level of significance. The findings revealed that there is a significant relationship between sexual behaviour and marital life adjustment among couples and there is also a significant relationship between mental health and marital life adjustment among couples in delta state. Recommendations was made that Challenged couples should visit Professional marriage counsellor in order to help them understand the causes of their poor marital life adjustment, the challenged couples should come together to find out the causes of their marital life adjustment problem.