ABSTRACT
Graphotherapy has been suggested by some authorities to have potential for improvement of self-disclosure. This suggestion is yet to be investigated. Therefore, this study was designed to determine the effect of treatment, (graphotherapy versus control), sex and locus of control (internal versus external) on the self-disclosure of clients. The effects of interaction of these independent variables on the self-disclosure of clients were also determined. In addition, the amount of variation in the self-disclosure of clients that could be accounted for by their type of treatment, sex, locus of control and age were also assessed. Eight research questions and corresponding hypotheses were postulated, to give direction to the study.
The study employed a pretest post test control group design where the pretest was only used to determine the locus of control of the subjects with a sample consisting of 160 secondary school students made up of 80 male and 80 female students. Their locus of control were determined from their scores on Rotter locus of control scale. Equal number of students were randomly assigned as treatment and control subjects. The treatment (graphotherapy) was administered on the experimental group for eight weeks. At the end of treatment, the self-disclosure of students for experimental and control groups were measured using the self-disclosure scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory. The test retest reliability of Rotter’s scale of locus of control and Eysenck self - disclosure scale were found to be 0.735 and 0.685 respectively .
A ( 2 x 2 x 2 ) ANOVA was employed to analyse the data collected. All hypotheses were tested at .05 level of significance. The analyses revealed a significant difference in the self-disclosure in favour of the treatment group (34.02 vs 27.42) with F value =29.70, df =(1, 113). Moreover there were no significant differences in the disclosure due to differences in locus of control or sex. However, the significant interactions of treatment by sex, and sex by locus of control were revealed in the analysis with F value 7.44, df = (1,113) and F = 9.35, df= (1,113) respectively. Both interactions being ordinal in nature. Though treatment, sex, locus of control and age were found to be responsible for 56% of the variation in the self disclosure scores of the subjects, only treatment and sex were found to be significant predictors of self disclosure.
