Effect of Cognitive Restructuring on Anxiety among Students in College of Arabic and Islamic Legal Studies Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the Effect of Cognitive Restructuring on Anxiety among students in College of Arabic and Islamic Legal Studies Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. The study adopted a non-equivalent pre-test post-test design. The population of this study was twenty (20) students that was purposively selected from three department in the college. Participants were exposed to eight weeks of cognitive restructuring training. One instrument: Burns Anxiety Inventory (BAI) (α= 0.79) was used for the pre-test and post-test. The study was guided by three (3) research questions and three (3) hypotheses.  Bio data were described and the research questions were answered using percentage, mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses are tested using paired t-test. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance.  Findings of this study revealed that; There was a significant effect of cognitive restructuring on psychological anxiety at post-test level (t = 8.315, p < 0.05). Also There is no significant effect of cognitive restructuring on cognitive anxiety at post-test level (t = 11.87, P<0.05) compared to the pre-test score. There is no significant effect of cognitive restructuring on physical anxiety at post-test level (t = 5.810, P>0.05).In conclusion it was therefore recommended that psychologist and counsellors should be encouraged to adapt cognitive restructuring in handling anxiety problems among senior secondary school students.