Current Research Bulletin

The increasing prevalence of hostel squatting in Nigerian public universities has raised concerns about its implications for students' psychosocial well-being and academic outcomes. This study investigated hostel squatting as a predictor of academic achievement, interpersonal relationship and emotional adjustment among squatting undergraduate students in Federal University of Technology Owerri in Imo State. A predictive correlational survey design was adopted. The population comprised 850 undergraduate students identified through hostel records as living in squatting arrangements, from which a sample of 260 students was drawn using simple random sampling. Three research questions guided the study, and three null hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance. Data were collected using the Hostel Squatting Exposure and Undergraduate Adjustment Questionnaire (HSEUAQ), a 24-item four-point Likert-scale instrument validated by three experts from department of  Guidance and Counselling and Measurement and E valuation and yielding Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of .76, .80, .82 and .86 for its four sections. Research questions were answered using simple linear regression to determine the proportion of variance in each outcome accounted for by extent of hostel squatting, while the hypotheses were tested using the regression ANOVA F-test at the .05 level of significance. Findings revealed that extent of hostel squatting significantly and negatively predicted academic achievement, interpersonal relationship, and emotional adjustment, accounting for 33.6%, 24.0% and 38.4% of the variance in the three outcomes respectively. Based on the findings, it was recommended that university management treat the reduction of squatting intensity, not merely its prevalence, as a priority, and that counselling units prioritize students with the longest squatting exposure and highest room-occupancy ratios for early intervention.

hostel squatting, predictive correlational design, academic achievement, interpersonal relationship, emotional adjustment.

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