CAUSES OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AND THE COPING STRATEGIES ADOPTED BY PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOL COUNSELLORS IN ANAMBRA STATE

The study investigated the causes of occupational stress and the coping strategies adopted by public secondary school counselors in Anambra State. The study was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study consisted of all counsellors in public secondary schools in Anambra State. A sample size of 121 school counsellors was drawn using stratified sampling technique. The instrument used for data collection was questionnaire, which was duly validated by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha which yielded an overall reliability of 0.85 for the instrument with coefficients for the clusters being 0.88 and 0.82 respectively. Data was analyzed using, mean, and standard deviation to answer the research questions and t-test analysis to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed, some of the causes of occupational stress among school counselors such as; immoderate workload,