The big five personality as a predictor of involvement in violence among students in secondary schools in Nyando Sub-County, Kenya

Abstract

Involvement in violence among students is a common menace not only in Nyando Sub-county, Kenya but also in the whole world. Predicting involvement in violence based on the big five personalities could be useful in developing various personality-based interventions to involvement in violence. This prompted the present study to investigate both qualitative and quantitative Predictiveness of the big five personalities to involvement in violence. The convergent parallel mixed-method research design was used. Multistage random sampling was used to generate a sampling size of 418 students. Apart from the students, 26 teacher counselors and 26 deputy headteachers were also interviewed in order to triangulate the sources of information. Both selfreport questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data. The results indicated that the big five personalities were significantly predictive of involvement in violence at 23.4% (F (5, 391) = 26.886 p < 0.05 and R2 = 0.23). Hence other factors (apart from the big five personalities) predictive of involvement in violence which was qualitatively explored included: environmental factors, social factors, economic factors, familial factors, political factors, cultural factors, the psychosocial stages of development, exposure levels of a person, temperamental issues, modernism, and post-modernism. These other factors were assumed to predict involvement in violence at 76.6%. Therefore to minimize involvement in violence, more personality-based interventional measures should be applied.